The magnet and creating an audio cd

[jlocpa1]

I'm hoping someone out there can help me!

? #1: There's a little magnet inside MD player (approx MZFN610) that holds the disk in place while the player reads it. A few days ago, my magnet came out attached to my favorite MD. It's gonna cost at least $100 to fix which I won't spend to basically glue a piece back on. Does anyone know how or where instructions are to open the unit? It's out of warranty and this is my last attempt with dealing with MD technology so I'm willing to do it myself to salvage something. I could buy another MD player...but then when it breaks (two months out of warranty) I will have my ? #2.

? #2: I want to transfer my files bought on connect.com into mp3 files so that I can actually listen to them on my new flash mp3 player (or in my car, home stereo, anywhere!) since my md player is magnetless. When I try to create an audio cd (to use later to convert into mp3s) the exe file errors out about halfway through. I've figured out one method that's cumbersome, but hope there's something better. I get an error with the freeware converter at marcnetsystems. Any thoughts?

And folks, these two reasons are why I'm pretty much abandoning Sony MD, Sonicstage, and ATRAC. They're worried about piracy?!?! Right now, I have songs that I PAID FOR that I can only listen to while sitting at my computer and nowhere else. Maybe they should worry about their legit customers being able to use what we paid for.

Thx!!!