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Trying to get my Japanese Net MD to work on XP

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dragonfly

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I made a thread a few months ago about the Sony LAM-Z05 desktop MD/CD player here.

The CD it came with won't install because it's in Japanese. I downloaded SonicStage 4 and installed it, but it doesn't identify the device. I thought that there would be a universal, generic Net MD driver that would detect all of these devices. When I plug in the USB cable, nothing happens. It doesn't even say "Found new unknown device" or anything. It's like I'm not plugging in anything at all.

I tried browsing the CD and tried installing the various setup.exe files I could find manually, but it still doesn't seem to want to work.

Could there possibly be some driver out there somewhere I can download? It's stupid that Sonicstage won't recognize all MD players.

Edited by dragonfly
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Sorry, I don't know what happened to the rest of my original message. I thought I'd posted the whole message, but only a part of it got through. I was doing too many things at once.

It's not th end of the world... I can always grab my wife's Japanese laptop and plug it in there and install SonicStage on that computer. Still, I was hoping to be able to plug it into my own computer.

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Guessing from some of the the symptoms, it looks as if you need the correct ".inf" file to allow Windows to recognise the device.

In spite of the original CD being for the Japanese home market, the ".inf" files may well be there.

However, I still would have expected your system to recognise that there is a new device being connected, even if it couldn't locate the correct ".inf" for it, so maybe you have more than one problem(?)

I am sure someone here will be able to help.

Best of luck!

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I think I may have the solution for this. Last night I was at a friend's house and he showed me a trick. He too uses a lot of Japanese gadgets and software. He told me that I can change the regional langauge setting in XP's Control Panel to Japanese before installing it. I can then always switch it back to English. I'll try this tonight if I have time.

What is so strange is that XP doesn't even say "found new hardware/unknown device" or anything. It's like it just ignores that anything was inserted into the USB port. I tried more than one port, too. Strange.

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To install the JP version of SS (assuming that is what you are trying to do) you will indeed need to edit the Inf. file for the installer.

You will need to copy the entire contents of the cd to the hard drive. For SS the inf. should be call SetupSS or something similar.

You will see some lines like;

supportos =0x78

language =English

comment these out by putting a semi-colon at the beginning of the line.

;supportos =0x78

;language =English

Save the inf file and re-run the setup program (using App-Locale if you wish the characters in the setup phase to display correctly).

Changing the setting for non-unicode programs to Japanese via the control panel may negate the need to use app-locale to display the characters correctly in setup but you will still need to run SS through applocale after it is installed and you will still need to remove the os restriction from the .inf file.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Guys, this is a big discovery!

A friend of mine found this nifty device that forces programs into Japanese mode:

http://alcahest.club.fr/perso/apploc/applocale.html

It's called Applocale. The software installed just fine! It comes with the J-Sonic Stage version 2.5 or something, but I'm running Sonic Stage ver. 4 and once I press the Network button on the remote control, I can then browse the contents of the MD I've loaded!

Mods, you may want to make note of the link I've provided. I'm sure others who import Japanese MD players will find this program very useful!!! Merely changing XP's language preference in the Control Panel made no difference. It still refused to run. However with this new program, it worked.

I am so relieved that I once again have a NetMD player connected to my computer. My MD Walkman lost its ability to record about a year ago. But this new stereo will be a dedicated connection to my computer, and since it has an AC connection, I'll never have to worry about running out of battery power halfway through recording as I often did. (Recording seems to drain the battery life much faster.)

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