Help me reconnect with my MDS-PC2

[rossgallichotte@earthlink.net]

I purchased my MDS PC2 ....10 years ago and recorded 250 albums onto minidiscs. It used my computer for all the editing features and had the editing screen on the monitor. I had Windows 98 at the time. I upgraded to Window XP and never got it to work again. I recently upgraded to my new computer and to Vista 64 bit. I have rehooked up my MDS-PC2 and still have difficulty getting all (most) its features to work. I even sent it back to the regional Sony repair service center in Los Angeles and they swear it works fine so it must be me.

1. I cant get the MD editor to come up on screen although the computer has downloaded it (from the original disc) successfully. I have the manual in PDF form.

2. If I plug head phones into it, I can hear the music but have no control over the volume but it is sufficent to hear it at a reasonable level. But I used to be able to crank it up big time. However, it won't push any sound thru the computers sound system which works on CD's and DVD's really well ....5.1 channel sound card.

Because of the changeover to a new computer I had to get an RS232c adapter cable to USB to connect it.

The connections are as follows: from the back of the unit 2 optical cables are receieved by a Creative Labs digital input/output module CT4800., which in turns plugs into the input on the sound card with a mini jack plug. Also from the back of the unit from a port labeled A1 II another minijack is received by a Sony Vision Touch CAV 50 module which has an RS232c cable coming from it which is now plugged into the new RS232c to USB adapter cable and into the USB slot on the computer since it no longer has a serial port to connect to directly.

On the face of the unit it has an ATT red lighted letters which I believe is the attenuator. There is no mention of this in the manual. If one incorrectly connects the unit one gets a DIN UNLOCK 51(?) message in the scrolling window. This is not mentioned in the manual either. I never used the hand held (like TV)remote unit so it will work independently of it. With so few connections and fairly clear if brief directions in the manual it should be idiot proof ,however, I have met my match!

Do I need an updated a driver ? Does it exist?

Is my new cable the problem? Is it not compatible with newer operating systems?

Surely there is a genius amongst you that can help. I have a carton of 500 mini discs waiting to be fillled up ..if only!

Hoping for miracle

Ross

[sector001]

are there any error messages?

[sfbp]

Quick scan through (and I wish I had one of these!) and I think the answer is probably the sound card. W98 support very spotty for USB. And if a rarity then probably not good drivers for XP etc.

64-bit Vista - most unlikely it will ever work, you're using technology that's 32-bit, from the 16-bit era almost. You may have to emulate 32-bits, or dualboot. However Windows 7 beta seems to work according to 1Kyle, but he wasn't trying anything unusual like your device. You don't say what software, are we talking SonicStage? You **do not want * the original SonicStage or worse still its predecessor. Get Sonic Stage 4.3 and see first if that's it.

If not, I would be inclined to send off for a card that I knew works, the terratec Aureon 5.1 is good. I certainly had no luck at all hooking my JE-520 to a the Turtle Beach Montego, even though its predecessor the Santa Cruz worked fine.

If you can't find easily, I can give you help when I get back later on.

G'luck.

[sinus]

not very wise to choose an e-mail address as user name imho. already have increased spam?

[rossgallichotte@earthlink.net]

Quick scan through (and I wish I had one of these!) and I think the answer is probably the sound card. W98 support very spotty for USB. And if a rarity then probably not good drivers for XP etc.

64-bit Vista - most unlikely it will ever work, you're using technology that's 32-bit, from the 16-bit era almost. You may have to emulate 32-bits, or dualboot. However Windows 7 beta seems to work according to 1Kyle, but he wasn't trying anything unusual like your device. You don't say what software, are we talking SonicStage? You **do not want * the original SonicStage or worse still its predecessor. Get Sonic Stage 4.3 and see first if that's it.

If not, I would be inclined to send off for a card that I knew works, the terratec Aureon 5.1 is good. I certainly had no luck at all hooking my JE-520 to a the Turtle Beach Montego, even though its predecessor the Santa Cruz worked fine.

If you can't find easily, I can give you help when I get back later on.

G'luck.

THX for some insight

Okay lets try these all at once. yes I get a Din Unlock C71 code.

old sound card was "Creative Sound Blaster 5.1" and was terrific. Current computer is a "Dell" XPS 420 with each category(memory, hard drives etc. all up graded-sound built in on the board I think which I was told to avoid but that's what it came with it. I'm not sure if I can trade out card or add an extra sound card (?) and I can't find a name in the device manager for sound. you ask software? not sure what you mean by that? what do you mean by quick scan thru?and I wish I had one of these (a MDS-PC2?).

Dual boot may be possible ...I think I can get the beta(or even the pre beta from a relative to try out) for windows 7. would it be worth while to reload 98 back into my XP computer to see if works since its my spare now just a bit of PIA though!

Sinus:Im trying to get it changed, it was from 3 years ago and when I logged in it wouldnt recognise my old password or allow me to reregister to the same email address.

I'm no audophile and even less a computer geek but a fair knowledge to follow some of these hints. Please in general be really specific as almost all my computer knlowledge is in CAD CAM usage and less in the computer itself.

I am unfamilar with any of the newer MInidisc recorders or editors or if they exist , however, I am reading the site about HI MD and some of the ATrac stuff.... are there any better units more suited to my newer computer or is minidisc not well supported by sony as I have heard both and parts of this site still rave about it. I really liked it back when as I could keep albums discretely on individual discs as opposed to lumping massive amount of music on single units such as IPods and other MP3'ds, which I may do as well but mainly I would like to get tried true to run again at least I understood it enough to to work it.

R

Edited February 3, 2009 by rossgallichotte@earthlink.net

[sfbp]

Picture still a bit confused, is this a laptop or a desktop machine? Usually you can disable the sound card (I have done so in my Dell Dimension), and plug in a sound card with optical I/O. If a laptop you may be stuck with the external arrangement. The disablement has to be done in the ROM BIOS before the machine boots, though. Getting rid of the Windows devices is sorta irrelevant, as the install for whatever sound card you use will probably do that for you.

Din unlock means the signal simply isn't being put out. You should see this without an error message though - when it's working the tip of the optical cable (output) will show red light

That's a point - can you do INPUT via optical? Eg play something back and hear it on the PC speakers? That will be a function of the volume control for your sound card and will probably be mapped to something weird, as most people don't even try to do this.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "cant get the MD editor to come up on screen". I cannot imagine trying to use anything except Sonic Stage (if only because it's the only thing I have ever used).

[bobt]

Picture still a bit confused, is this a laptop or a desktop machine? Usually you can disable the sound card (I have done so in my Dell Dimension), and plug in a sound card with optical I/O. If a laptop you may be stuck with the external arrangement. The disablement has to be done in the ROM BIOS before the machine boots, though. Getting rid of the Windows devices is sorta irrelevant, as the install for whatever sound card you use will probably do that for you.

Din unlock means the signal simply isn't being put out. You should see this without an error message though - when it's working the tip of the optical cable (output) will show red light

That's a point - can you do INPUT via optical? Eg play something back and hear it on the PC speakers? That will be a function of the volume control for your sound card and will probably be mapped to something weird, as most people don't even try to do this.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "cant get the MD editor to come up on screen". I cannot imagine trying to use anything except Sonic Stage (if only because it's the only thing I have ever used).

I believe one of the selling points of this unit was the ability to use the computer and monitor as your edit table, at least that's what I get from looking at the equipment browser.

Bob

[sfbp]

I see what you mean, I got misled by the talk of USB. Sorry about that.

The sound card driver software will have to "turn on" the Toslink i/o before anything can happen, is my belief. I am not sure how the computer interacts with the device if there's no USB connection. That's the part, that even with the manual open in front of me, I do not understand.

The Control AII cable - exactly what is it supposed to plug into? And what software on the 'puter is supposed to drive it? If you can figure out how it used to work, the answers to those questions will have to be translated to your new machine. Was there an interface card supplied by Sony? Weird, the docs make no mention of RS232.

(added)

Ahhh it is starting to make some sense now. Your new computer has probably a 9-pin serial connector, whereas I am thinking maybe the old one had a 25-pin. There is always an issue of handshake lines. A "null modem no handshake" arrangement on the 9-pin is a bit different from that on the 25-pin, and an adapting connector may not relay the right pins properly.

Am I getting close? You might want to try an external modem or other serial device on the serial port, whatever it is. My guess is that the software for MD hangs up waiting on the serial port for lack of communication.

[rossgallichotte@earthlink.net]

I believe one of the selling points of this unit was the ability to use the computer and monitor as your edit table, at least that's what I get from looking at the equipment browser.

Bob

Bob, your point is spot on.

R

[rossgallichotte@earthlink.net]

I see what you mean, I got misled by the talk of USB. Sorry about that.

The sound card driver software will have to "turn on" the Toslink i/o before anything can happen, is my belief. I am not sure how the computer interacts with the device if there's no USB connection. That's the part, that even with the manual open in front of me, I do not understand.

The Control AII cable - exactly what is it supposed to plug into? And what software on the 'puter is supposed to drive it? If you can figure out how it used to work, the answers to those questions will have to be translated to your new machine. Was there an interface card supplied by Sony? Weird, the docs make no mention of RS232.

(added)

Ahhh it is starting to make some sense now. Your new computer has probably a 9-pin serial connector, whereas I am thinking maybe the old one had a 25-pin. There is always an issue of handshake lines. A "null modem no handshake" arrangement on the 9-pin is a bit different from that on the 25-pin, and an adapting connector may not relay the right pins properly.

Am I getting close? You might want to try an external modem or other serial device on the serial port, whatever it is. My guess is that the software for MD hangs up waiting on the serial port for lack of communication.

lets see if i can make a little more sense of this. you may be very close

The control AII cable minijack at each end plugs into aport on back of MDS unit it uses only one of 2 ports available .The other end plugs into a "sony vision touch CAV-50 C" which has a RS232c serial port cable (9pin)(female)which used to plug into a serial port (male)on back of old computer!. the new computer has only USB's so I got an adapter RS232c (male 9 pin)to USB cable and plugged it into new computer which still doesn't recognise the new hardware.

Sony provided a CD called MD Editor 2 which one downloaded and it made monitor look like a editing suite with 2 columns for editing,it also had the manual and a"picture label maker" portion to it so you could make sticky labels for the discs. all these items were included in the original kit.Soft ware being on the disc.

The old computer had a 9 pin serial port card on it. Tthe new computer has only USB's. My brother tells me to try and open an expansion slot on new computer and put in a pci slot serial port card that works with vista 64 which we found on the net for 50.00 bucks.. but the caveat is that there still may not be driver for the soft ware? but at least the computer could recognise the MDSPC2.

additionally your handshake analogy may be correct for when i went to get a transfer cable to move files from XP to Vista the double ended USB cable would not work on Vista 64bit although it was labellled specifically for XP to Vista the company Belkin(Best Buy) apolgised for neglecting to say it wasnt compatable with vista 64

also i can disconnect the "line out" optical cable and see a red light coming out of it. The MDSpc2 has 1 optical line out. it has 2 optical line ins. there are also analog jacks ;2 line in and 2 line outs. L&R in , L& R out all RCA jacks and additionally one of the jacks "line out" R is labelled variable .My brother suppossed it was possible if the computer recognised the hard ware with the serial port connection that any newer editing type audio could be used to replace my MD editor portion such as Roxoi or this "soundstage" which you refer to.

you wrote

That's a point - can you do INPUT via optical? Eg play something back and hear it on the PC speakers? That will be a function of the volume control for your sound card and will probably be mapped to something weird, as most people don't even try to do this.

yes i could do optical input to the MDSpc2 but dont have capability on computer but your point is well taken if i were to get a new sound card( with optical outs) also suggested by brother( computer guy but not familar with MD or my unit but clearly understands they are not talking to each other ...unit/computer) however the sound system is currently a Sigmatel chip on the mother board using microsoft drivers that updated after dell had installled theirs.

sigmatel STAC 92xx C-major HD audio is the sound card or chip,I understand howto go about disabling old sound system if i install a new card.

are there any current recorders that do something similar to what I am trying to accomplish ? Is this "soundstage" used on a computer ?

R

Edited February 3, 2009 by rossgallichotte@earthlink.net

[sfbp]

finally we (I) got there... there is no serial port on your PC. I don't think you will do handshaking properly, as the software to control the MDS PC2 at some level *knows* about the serial port.

So - I have read of the USB substitutes for serial port, but unless it emulates the ports that the software is expecting in *every* respect, I predict problems. I recall something of the kind with bluetooth that pretends to be serial port.

At the very least you are going to have to run some very careful configuration on that "fake" (USB) serial port. Don't worry about the sound card part until you have that under control.

Also running both the optical port and the control (serial) via USB may be asking for trouble - not sure there. I cannot believe that Vista of any flavour is incapable of recognising a real serial (COM) port. That must be just configuration. So I would try replacing one or if necessary both of these USB-based connecting devices, with the real McCoy, if you are able.

Good luck!

[kino170878]

If you can find the next model up which is the MDS-PC3 and get hold of a PCLK MN10 unit you can download the latest version of MCrew software (Windows XP compatible). The PCLK MN10 supplies optical outputs and USB connection to the PC. All the MD editor features should be there and perhaps more. I couldn't live without uploading and downloading of track titles into Excel for instance.

Have a look here there are other MD units which do exactly what you need but it does mean you will have to buy more equipment.

http://www.minidisc.org/sony_pclk_compatability_chart.htm

Otherwise get hold of an ancient PC through ebay with the old Windows 98 and it should be fine.

[rossgallichotte@earthlink.net]

If you can find the next model up which is the MDS-PC3 and get hold of a PCLK MN10 unit you can download the latest version of MCrew software (Windows XP compatible). The PCLK MN10 supplies optical outputs and USB connection to the PC. All the MD editor features should be there and perhaps more. I couldn't live without uploading and downloading of track titles into Excel for instance.

Have a look here there are other MD units which do exactly what you need but it does mean you will have to buy more equipment.

http://www.minidisc.org/sony_pclk_compatability_chart.htm

Otherwise get hold of an ancient PC through ebay with the old Windows 98 and it should be fine.

I will look into this as a solution. I have ordered a serial port card with vista 64 support. We'll see if that is any help. it may be that without a driver for the MDS-PC2 I'm out of luck to cleanly record while Im at work. I have the old windows Xp computer whichI can reload the windows 98 if thats the only way. Just the troglodite method. Maybe there are some MDS-PC3's out there also. I will let ya'll know next week if I make any progress..... thanks to all for the insight and effort.

R

Edited February 4, 2009 by rossgallichotte@earthlink.net

[sfbp]

The problem is not going to be 64-bit support, I think. What you have to do is to configure the serial card as one of the ***STANDARD*** serial ports so that relatively old software on the PC side can use it. Depending on exactly what Sony's software division did to implement serial communication you may be ok. Most likely of all is that the handshake lines were not correctly emulated by the original USB dongle that you were trying to use.

But it is important to set up the serial card as COM1, IRQ 4, 3F8 port address, and default to the baud rate specified in the manual for the PCLK. All the above settings were built into Windows and any computer that has a serial card on the motherboard, but may have to be specifically set on installation. In particular there is a tendency to allow higher baud (ie transmission) rates on newer equipment whereas there's a good chance that interface operates at 9600 baud. I'm not sure about the parity and stop bits, but these should be clearly specified somewhere in the manual.

I would be inclined to try some other device out once you got it (and you could still try this with the existing setup) such as an external modem, to see if you can get some communication software to talk to that modem - thus proving you have the port correctly installed.

Another thing would be to try to get said card to work on some other computer first - however of course the other machine will have a serial port already, so you won't be able to set the serial card to those settings if it does.

Clear as mud?

[windbag]

I'm posting to this old thread as it comes high up in theGoogle search "sony minidisc error c71"

You can get this error even if you provide a valid digital signalvia a working cable to the correctly selected digital input port (mine was aTOSLINK).

The minidisc wants a "standard" 44.1 kHz, 16 bitsignal.

But some DACS and soundcards and digital amps can put out upto 24 bits at 192kHz and beyond.

The minidisc fails to "lock" on to that, and mistakenly tells you nothing is there at all by the C71 error message.

Fortunately, these advanced pieces of kit can usually set the nature of their digital outputs back to the (relatively low-grade) standard the minidisc expects.