kgallen

Thanks for the listing link that’s really useful. Looks like the 780 or 980 (or S500 or NT1). I was thinking about deck just for convenience so I can leave it connected up to the PC and they tend to be more robust. Maybe I should have a play with one of my portables, I’m sure I must have at least one working NetMD one!

Ditto. Finding SIF works on Chrome on iPhone11, Firefox on Win10 but won't resolve ("This site can't be reached") on Chrome on Win10 (maybe I need to clear the cache or something?).

TL;DR Which MD deck is the "best" for using with a Windows PC (Win10) and Web Minidisc Pro or Platinum MD apps. When I say "best" I mean the most reliable (connection and transfer) and a machine that I have a fighting chance of finding in the UK and where SP mode works well and sounds good. Those of you who frequent here will know that I do sound for a number of local theatre groups. During a performance I play music and sound effect tracks from MD using my MDS-E12 machines. Generally I will have two, one for the music (backing track) cues and one for the sound effects/incidental music and the like. The tracks are prepared on a PC with Audacity then I go through the laborious task of burning the tracks to CD-R using NeroBurning ROM, then I go downstairs and use my Tascam MD-CD1 to dub the CD-R across to each MD. Then if required I have to do some post editing on the MD - usually on the sound effects tracks - to trim them back to their required length. [Since CD enforces a minimum 4 second track length, many SFX tracks get bloated out to 4s when naturally they are 2s or less. The length needs to be trimmed (and MD will allow such short tracks) because they might need to be played back in quick succession and I don't have the time to allow that bloated track length to play the extra 2s of silence.]. Then after all of this messing about I need to listen very carefully to all of the MDs in real time to ensure nothing went haywire in all of this process and corrupted the audio or track titling - and if there is an issue I have to go back around the loop again. This is very time consuming... I'm doing this mastering process now for our panto which is coming up in early January (oh yes it is! [before @BearBoy gets me again!])... and it got me wondering, now that we have some great apps like Web Minidisc Pro and Platinum MD, could I cut out the middle-man (the CD-R) and just write the MDs directly from the PC. That would save a lot of faff... Now I know some of you are looking skyward and slapping your forehead because you have been doing just this for a long time. But you've probably been doing it with portables. But despite my rather healthy stock of MD machines I've never got into the NetMD thing. Basically because I'm more of a decks fella and I don't have a 980. So... what are my realistic options here for deck machines? And as above, ones that work with NetMD and these apps reliably... Pros/cons of each candidate machine? (I just rewatched the Techmoan video...)

For completeness I’ll add his belt change video (although I think most of us here are already pretty experienced at this). Applies to most consumer and pro decks, combos and hifi units from about year 2000 since they all use one or other variant of the MDM7 drive (MDLP Type-R, Type-S and high speed dub units). I’ll add again that my preferred supplier for the belts is Charles Holt who had belts made to our spec for this drive. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/194744734027 See the link on the minidisc wiki repair page for the same belt change: https://www.minidisc.wiki/guides/repair/e12-belt

I know exactly which screws I need to take out now 😆, which is not all of them 😆! For a 2000-era unit it seems quite serviceable. Screws rather than breakable plastic clips hold the thing together. It does still have a couple of niggles - there is a pixel row and column of the main LCD that are out and it persists on still going into demo mode (which it shouldn’t do once the clock is set!). Needs some more investigation at some point. But the MD section is fully working. 👍

I’ve got it (but thank you!) but it doesn’t help much with the part ‘cos they list Sony part numbers. The info I needed is on the component (5.5V 0.22F). The order from RS arrived about half an hour ago and the unit is now fixed 😀 For anyone who cares, the RS part number is 184-5554… https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/supercapacitors/1845554/ and I’ve got 9 spares! 😆

I’ve just done a load/eject belt swap in our Sony DHC-NX5MD mini hifi. It took a disc yesterday and wouldn’t give it back! The drive is an MDM-7B, so our fave 17x0.8 belt. That all went well but I notice the machine always does an ‘Initialise’ after power has been removed. I’ve probed out the supercap and it doesn’t seem to be maintaining the backup voltage so I’ve ordered a new one (or a new 10!) from RS, so hopefully that will be here tomorrow and I’ll swap out the duff one. Hopefully that will sort the issue.

Crazy days, CPC price for this case is now nearly 60 quid! They were about 27. They have 12 in stock - either they are cashing in on the popularity or ‘supply chain issues’ have put prices like this up to silly levels. It’s quiet round here, where is everyone?

Just bear in mind that if the machine has been sitting around unused for some years, it might need a bit of use and button pressing and twiddling to free up the mech and clear oxidation from the contacts. Hope it starts to behave for you.

Weird as on my iPhone, Chrome has worked pretty consistently (like now). On PC I need to use Firefox as Chrome doesn’t work there.

That’s ‘cos this site is ‘MD porn’ 🤣

According to the sub-forum title I assumed only Mods could start threads in Announcements. Clearly not!

Mod - moved to MD.

Mod - moved to MD Technical sub-forum.

Hi Norman, Can you elaborate/clarify the messages? Pressing the AMS knob is ‘yes’. It sounds to me like the deck is going into the Edit menu, where the active option is the Track Divide function, hence the ‘Divide Rehearsal’ message. The last time this sort of thing was reported, the user had a keyboard plugged in and one of the keys was stuck down. Can’t be the case with a 440 but make sure there is no Sony remote around that has buttons pressed (I’ve fallen foul of this one!). The hex digits is interesting. The only thing that comes to mind is the Error Retry Cause display (see photo). This comes about after holding STOP for 10 seconds or more. (These are photos from my 520, but similar on the 440).

Welcome Norman! Don’t worry we can do daft answers too! One of the reasons I want to keep this forum running is there is a wealth of technical knowledge documented here. It’s worth having a browse or search of the minidisc section of the forum to see what we’ve been discussing over the years! Kevin

This sounds like the TOC RAM is getting corrupted or not updated correctly - assuming you hadn't written the "last divide" to disc and were playing back from a disc with the machine showing "dirty TOC". As I'm sure you're aware, erased music is still on disc until overwritten, it's just the TOC (in RAM and on disc) is updated to show that area as free for recording. That half speed stuff is weird - is it really that slow or does it seem like -12.5% (or whatever the 530 pitch goes down to. Things I would check - not sure if these are feasible for you: (1) the voltage of the internal ML2020 battery, with the machine unplugged. Should be around 3V. (2) the frequency of the crystal - can't remember exactly what it is, somewhere around 48MHz, but it will be written on the can. However it's better to probe on a buffered clock output otherwise your 'scope of frequency counter probe could upset the crystal. I'll have a look in the SM to see if there is a convenient pin or PCB node... Keep us up to date. ETA: (2) correction, it's 45.1584MHz. Pin 4 (or pin 6, or both) of IC322 looks a good spot. Or pin 9 of IC321 (the AK4524 ADC/DAC).

Doh! Hope you manage to clean it up.

I’ve got the 520 (which I’ve edited on lots) and the 530 (which is pretty much the same machine but Type-R rather than 4.5). The only thing I can suggest to check is that you are moving the ‘frames’ counter and you haven’t accidentally moved to seconds or minutes and you’re going over the end (or start) of the track. I guess this is unlikely but it’s the only thing I can think of.

There seems to be stock of 10-pack Neige at GBP27.50 if of any interest. NOS? SONY 10MDW80NED Mini Disk, 80 Minutes, 10 Disc Set https://amzn.asia/d/6f0SGJQ

Nice @BearBoy! They all work ok? Best I can do is ‘prove’ my trusty MZ-R700 from 2000 is still alive and well. I’m listening to a radio mix-tape at work as I photo/write this 😍 (R909 is still dead…)

Wow did you rob a museum? ’Worth’ is now a tricky one as the number of people with the requisite machines is a forever dwindling number. You would need to have the cables to make them usable. Beautiful and highly valuable as a piece of kit they may be but unfortunately these days you could be down to ‘hobbyist curiosity’ money, I think you will have missed the boat for ‘proper’ money. However I would encourage you to put them up for sale rather than discarding them. To the right owner these are more than gold. The challenge is finding those owners… Make the community aware of their existence on as many portals as you can. Thanks for posting and I hope these beauties can be kept in the community. https://www.reddit.com/r/minidisc/ http://www.tapeheads.net/forumdisplay.php?f=140 https://www.minidisc.wiki/start Others, see: https://www.minidisc.wiki/community/start#social_media_communities

Yea leave 'em be if they are working. They aren't a type that will leak (we leave that to Duracell Procell when they are in expensive equipment). They'll explode if you wire 'em across the mains though! (It's ok, your MD deck won't do that!).

The MDS-JE440 has an ML2020, but you could use the VL2020. However the larger capacity VL2320 above is a pound cheaper at RS, so if it fits the PCB, I'd put one of those in!

Yes, it is. Main board has to come out to desolder and solder in the new one - they are rechargeable cells not the CR2030 type of primary cell that are usually in holders. This is the only one of my machines that has genuinely needed a new battery - and I have a 1999 MDS-JE520 thru' to 2002-era MDS-E12 machines (and quite a few as you know! 😁). I did replace this battery in my forever-broken E10 to see if it was part of the problem, but it didn't help, so even the battery in that one was good. They do seem pretty robust. However I note that in the lower-end machines it's a smaller capacity version of this cell, so I'm surprised we don't hear about more of them failing. I don't think there is a huge downside, it just means the machine does that "Initialise" phase but it's only a couple of seconds - but it forgets any user settings you might have made (it doesn't lose laser config or anything critical). In the case of the MDS-E12 it has a real time clock which forgets and there are other settings that get forgotten like calendar format, parallel and serial I/O config and Resume settings. So as I'd bought a couple of spares I thought I'd change it. Initially I couldn't find the right mounting type with the pins both on the bottom (I'm sure I must have pictured the one I put in the E10 - it had the pins at a right angle and I had to add a wire). But RS started stocking the right one, or at least a newer version of. What I should probably point out, as I was a bit dismissive above, is this battery retains RAM contents in the machine. This RAM contains the data that has been read from the disc TOC, or has been modified during record. If you had a power cut during record, or during TOC write, then the machine should be able to recover the TOC (at least in newer machines). Also it's the information that means when you turn a machine on with the disc still in, it already knows the disc contents and titles, so can display them on the machine immediately, rather than needing to read the disc. So in this respect the battery is a little more key, and if it starts to fail, this is probably the stronger reason to replace it.