@@CathyInBlue Oh I demand to see life's manager almost daily, but that guy's a wily one and hasn't made an appearance yet. Starting to wonder a bit . . . .
@@themlotproductions £50? I thought it worked out to more like £10 per working unit when it was all said and done, and a couple of the salvaged units are really nice recorders.
I find them regularly at the recycling center and they pretty much all work, I also find 7/8th gen i7/i5 laptops that work. It's surprising how people don't care about outdated but perfectly fine tech stuff.
@@LaurentiusTriarius At least MiniDisc requires actual discs which are kind of rare -- unlike that 7th/8th gen laptop, which isn't obsolete by any stretch. I'm typing this on a 3rd gen Celeron! I should hang around your recycling center and snag an upgrade or three.
Indeed. I know Techmoan said not to buy these lots, but I'm still tempted by one of these lots. My Dad wants to split a lot with me at some point, so I want to try one out for fun.
SONY: "wow look at how many minidisc players are being bought amd how much buzz their is about minidisc. Perhaps it's makeing a comeback?" Matt: "today I'm cleaning 100 minidisc players"
I love how initially laid out all your repair materials but half way through you resorted to giving it a whack. Your videos are a Saturday highlight - cheers.
Out of curiosity, if a machine relies on a spinning motor that's having trouble getting its spin starting, wouldn't it be possible that a good whack might just be the kickstart it needs?
Giving it a whack is not as wacky as it may sound! I have noticed that the biggest problem with my old Sharp MD player (besides the gumstick battery being deader than dead after all these years) is that the carriage can get stuck when it hasn't moved for a long time. A good whack will usually remedy this.
Haha, back in the high times of MD I was working as a repair technician for Sony, you would not believe how many devices were sent in for repair and just had the hold button in the locked position - we even had a special card that explained what the hold button does :-D
For the full early 2000's experience I recommend connecting one of the MD players to a Playstation 2 via the optical out and recording game music so you can listen to it later. Many good memories of recording MSX FM from GTA3 to Hi-MD via the optical out
Some of the ones with a TOC read error may have a similar issue to mine which was sat unused for over 10 years... the motor for the read head had seized. I lubricated the Worm gear and gently moved the read head back and forward numerous times by hand to try and unsieze it. Worked for a while but seemed to seize again 20 or so minutes into a disc so I re-opened it, cleaned the worm gear with IPA, re-lubricated and manipulated the read head again and it has worked perfectly since
The way most of the Sony devices work is that the lid of the gumstick battery bay, with the positive contact, connects to the chassis through the hinge - if the hinge has corrosion in it, there is a good chance it won't connect. This can be tested using a multimeter between the battery terminal and the terminal for the external battery case as these are wired in parallel. Thanks for the great videos as always.
What is it about MD that still fascinates us!!! The amount of variations of design is amazing. Some great looking machines you’ve got there. Great video from a fellow MD lover! 💽
In all my years of troubleshooting and repair, I've learned that "dirty laser lenses" is kind of a myth. Unless it was one of those stereo/boombox types with the lid that opened fully and some kid with jam hands was getting the lens all sticky with boogers and whatnot, then cleaning the laser lens is more or less a lesson in futility.
@@testname4464 Yes, but they rarely get dirty enough that you can't make out what it is your seeing, it is just a little blurry or whatever. I can't remember the last time that my glasses were so dirty that I couldn't see out of them at all, except when coming in from outside and they fog for a few minutes, but that is not the same thing.
@@testname4464 I don't know what to tell you. I didn't say that I never clean my glasses, I said that they don't get dirty enough for me not to be able to see out of them entirely. Blurry is not the same as complete obstructed. I obviously live in the same world as you and it certainly isn't perfect. I won't keep arguing this with you, have a nice life.
Hey Techmoan, I work on a lot of CD drives for game consoles and one of the surprise culprits for them has been the sensor switches for lid, media or laser positions. These are usually little pressure lever based microswitches. Using the youtube standard deoxit I've had a lot of success cleaning these switches and watching the devices spring back to life. They seem to be prone to oxidization. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if some of these mini disc players have a sensor switch or two gummed up from the elements and are in need of contact restoration. Try it if you can, but shield sensitive elements like the laser lens from the spray.
19:56 my Sony D-35 Discman had an episode of "scrambled buttons" that turned out to be a dirty hold switch that was making partial contact - a bit of exercise & it came good, thankfully.
Some machines have a two wire control where different resistors are connected to request different actions. A dirty contact somewhere is going to throw off those values enough that buttons end up doing something other than what they are labeled for. This may be a fairly simple fix.
It's amazing how many different MiniDisc player designs were actually made and sold - outside the USA anyway. My SHARP unit still works, and takes AA batteries instead of using a "gum stick".
Fascinating video! I am SO impressed by your patience and persistence! I am now *really* annoyed I gave away all my MD stuff. Absolutely perfect for community radio.
I bought MD recoder because I was interested in minidisc after seeing your past video, and I bought junk condition Sony netMD with battery terminal corroded because I did not want to spend a lot of money on discontinued devices. This was easily removed with a home rust remover containing phosphoric acid and then operated perfectly
I wonder why we love these MD videos so much? I dont get it..but here I am, watching and wanting one for no reason other than they look cool and you make them seem really interesting.
I don’t have the time, money, or space to do what he did so I feel like I’m living vicariously watching him go through all the MD player models and try to fix them.
To me they seem like the perfect technology for the moment. In an age of subscription where we own nothing, physical media is making a comeback, and minidisc seems like the perfect compromise between the sound quality of CD and the portability and read/write abilities of cassette tapes. I’m not good at fixing and troubleshooting old tech, but if they started making these again I would purchase one.
wow I like how fiercely you ended up staying on this topic and turned this into a series even very awesome especially also and as for me to see since I skipped that minidisc thing back in the day so all the more nice to see what it was about as for the now retro tech . . .
Not quite sure why I watched the whole of this video and enjoyed it. It’s just some guy in England importing a pile of Japanese junk and going through it piece by piece. I guess Techmoan does it so we don’t have to. I genuinely love it. 😁
Not a bad result in the end, just shows how contact cleaner can help! Personally, I use De-ox it, it's not cheap but will save devices for years... Bad battery contacts, switches, pots, etc. It's been worth it's weight in gold over the years, saved many portables, amps, etc.
All Hail the Mighty Lemon 👐 Excellent weekend viewing whilst doing my soldering. Honestly amazed that any of these kinds of micro devices still work at all. Tempted to buy one myself. Some seem bomb proof.
Suggestion: you might want to neutralize that lemon acid on the device when you are done cleaning, otherwise it may cause unwanted corrosion over time.
Thanks for your great videos. As a 30 year, retired veteran of the Australian audio industry, youve shown me things that ive never heard of, let alone seen. Inwas, vaguely familiar with the Philips ski slope, but i dont remember actually seeing one. But then,these days, i dont remeber a lot of things. Cheers & keep up the good work. After 30 years in the business, it gets in your blood & I’ll always be interested in old stuff.
I was happy about the MD players that work. Then you dropped the bomb "I'm not selling them to you" and my heart shattered and broke into a million bits. 😢
10 hours! You have the patience of a saint. Great stuff, love your videos, keep up the good work (because I wouldn't have the patience - and neither would the wife).
A lot of the Sony MD players have a hidden service menu where you can do laser and magnetic diagnostics. Some of the older portable recorders might play discs but will fail / choppy audio when trying to record.
I've also had a problem on a couple units where any edit to the TOC (even just renaming or moving a track without recording anything new) corrupts the whole TOC and makes the disc unreadable. I assume this would only apply to recorders, too, since the players don't have any TOC editing ability.
For the mz-r55 it’s like the conami code 😂 ff ww ff ww ff ww vol up vol down play pause play pause 😂 (FYI that isn’t the actual code, look for the service manual for your player the see how to access the diagnostics menu)
A thing to consider is that very very thin dust that comes from jean’s pockets. Especially those thin devices that goes often on pockets. The dust sneaks in the optical assembly, on the prism and make the reading to fail (TOC errors, or erratic play after some lucky attempts).
I and many of my friends had them in the day. There's a reason the corners are often worn. The corner smack was common to unjam the micro motor that spun the disc, or the carriage. I had a sony recorder and it failed once. One slap and it was sorted.
Depends what one considers 'working'. Most of the old portables will play fine, but recording correctly, that's a whole different ballgame. Because in that case, the very frilly magnetic head that touches the top layer of the disc needs to still be perfectly aligned with the last underneath the disc, the tiny flat cable not broken and the magnetic head not clogged with dust/dirt.
The more videos you do on the MD format, the more I'm obsessed with it, Mat! I really love MDs, and I really want to get a Hi-Fi or Mini Hi-Fi MD player that can record discs with the metadata included, as well as a bunch of recordable discs and start burning them with my favourite music. I'll then take those discs, along with any pre-recorded albums I can get hold of, and play them on a portable MD player, making that my primary listening device when I'm out and about (whenever that becomes a thing again without lockdowns and such). I dunno if you're planning to do any more videos on MDs, but if you do, I'm looking forward to them!
"Because these two pegs here where the power goes through, certain machines have them at different widths to one another" That's the most Sony thing ever
Yeah, if Sony want to know why they fell out of favour with a lot of people they only need to look at the nonsense they were playing with their power adapters and memory cards in the early 2000s.
@@MarquisDeSang It has nothing to do with the tolerances, Sony of that era would just make random changes to power adapters between device revisions for no reason.
@@smorris12 Sony was awesome bang for the buck in the late 1970s through the 1980s. In spite of Beta/max... But their success really started going to their heads and in the 1990s onward they not only got too expensive, they went crazy with proprietary everything. Unfortunately, that seems to be the rule. Every company that starts out with great products at reasonable prices seems to sooner rather than later get cocky and start doing everything wrong.
@@awo1fman They get carried away with their own hype I suppose. I had a friend who spent a fortune on high end Sony stuff in the 90s and the reliability was appalling.
I picked up a minidisc player at a thrift store and before I could do much with it, someone stole it (and the rest of my work bag). Much more recently I found a Sony MZ-NH1 and with its lil docking station at a goodwill, and because it didn't have a power cord it was very cheap. Thanks to your video I just learned it does Hi-MD, came with a 1gig disc and has a LIP-4WM battery (a variation on the gum stick battery). I thought it had a built in battery till now. That is quite the collection you have. I never realized how many different companies and models of portable minidisc players there were. Good luck on the dead ones if you keep working on them, and congrats on the working ones.
going through all of those broken MD players reminded me of the prison scene from A Fistful of Yen "who are they?" "Just lost drunken men who don't know where they are and no longer care" "And these?" "These are lost drunken men who don't know where they are, but do care! And these are men who know where they are and care, but don't drink."
Misbehaving buttons happens to various Sony things. I think they must use a resistor ladder affair (*) and grot under the contacts affects the resistance. * All the switches are paralleled together, each with their own resistor in series. The processor measures the voltage on an analogue input to then determine which button is pressed
Neat trick, used it on some of my MCU projects where I had a free ADC pin but not enough digital ones to make a matrix. Tho I do wonder why would they go with this strategy for like 5 buttons or so, even tho that's kinda a good quantity to use this technique for (too many and they will most certainly fail).
@@Kalvinjj My mother has a Sony radio/cd thing in the kitchen which gets continual use. Both unit and remote control buttons are temperamental but it took well over 10 years to manifest itself so I have to admit that that's definitely "good enough" from a manufacturer
Because of your video, I went to check out all the MD portables I have. I have gotten 20 over the years 18 regular recorder/players, and 2 HiMD Sonys. All but 1 were Sony mopdels. After checking all of them (and thank you for the lemon juice to clean corroded battery contact idea), I have 15 that work with the AC adapter (I didn't check with a battery except for the one non Sony model which also worked) 3 that tried to read but couldn't, and 2 that I was unable to open at all. Thanks again for the video!!
Just a couple of notes from my CD experiences: 1) The external battery packs: you mention that some of them don't line up, being too narrow or too wide; I had one that those contacts could be slid along a channel to line up. It wasn't an official sony or other name brand product, I recall is was an off-brand, universal type of thing. Not sure if any of yours may have that option, or if you could even come across one on an auction site. 2) The Lens Cleaning Discs: first of all, that lens cleaner with the ribbon that you wiggle, with the little brush on the disc--that is how all CD lens cleaners work, they all have a brush of some kind stuck to the disc to spin around on the laser. If you opened up that official sony lens cleaning disc, you would (i'm 99.9% sure) find a little brush affixed to the disc in the same manner. Also, with my cd-lens cleaners, I always put a drop of isopropyl/rubbing alcohol on that little brush before i put the cd into to the player. It always seemed to get the player working for a good while before needing cleaned again.
Recall seeing these for sale in many places outside the U.S., while traveling in the 90's. They were always rather costly, and many still are if you can find them on an auction site, usually missing the key ingredients necessary for them to work. That kind of explains why so many reached out to you for a proper trouble shot MD Player, since your doing all the work of getting them to operate for them. Great content. Thanks for sharing.
Your Vidz are so refreshing and fun. Please never stop!! MD was my favorite format ever!! I get it....we can get all songs now...but ....back in the day you'd had to choose!!!
Loved the follow-up video and great to see quite a few working. Preparations for the collapse of the global economy when Mini-disk players become a currency is well under way!!!
@@tarstarkusz from my experience, the spray stains some plastic finishes, but the brush on stuff hasn't been a problem. I last used the spray about 15 years ago, so they may have changed the formulation.
I work in a job where nobody cares about discolored plastic and time is of the essence. Thanks though, didnt know it could discolour some plastics. Haven't experienced that, myself.
@@tarstarkusz yeah, i primarily use it on electronics with metal chassis, vacuum tube sockets, and automotive connectors. Edit: they sell a different formula of it specifically for pots and faders.
So 50% of them work just fine. 10% work with some outside help. Not bad for a auction buy of this kind. I bought a bunch of electric train stuff and all but 2 pieces did not work nor were they repairable. A fine haul Techmoan.
Hey Matt, great vid as always! From my personal experience I'd recommend using white vinegar over lemon juice, there's a lot less residue and impurities that get left behind.
+1 here too. Actually managed to get a "frozen" 9V alkaline battery's contact free from a unit's connector with a bit of a soak in a tiny dish of cleaning vinegar (6% acidity rather than the usual 5%, not much difference really)
I really want an MD player too but obviously yeah he's more of an expert of these, I dont even have a single MiniDisc to even record on or even a device to do so. Hopefully I find some though
i was lucky enough a while ago to find a portable mini disc player/recorder.. it sounds good. also bought an optical cable for it to record . pretty decent. I do have to admit that I have a little envy for the stacks of awesomeness you have there !.
Schrödinger's minidiscs indeed. Good old Techmoan! Looking forward to the *next* job lot of MD players (assuming old Mat hasn't bought them all already...).
Bought a Porsche Boxster from new (back in the day) and insisted on having the factory fitted MD player as I was so into minidiscs. Kept the car for 16 years and felt obliged to pass on all my minidisc equipment to the purchaser when I sold the car. Wish I’d kept some of it. It was a great format
Matt, the Sony at 8:37 may not like that battery (I used the same fleabay specials). One of mine (I can't remember which one) did the same. Furthermore, I can't remember where I read it but I had to drill a dimple in the base of the battery for it to work without issue. I think there is a very crude but descrete microswitch on the battery flap. I've moved house twice since I last saw any of my portables and I still have several boxes to unpack.
Having worked at a repair/refurb facility long ago for several years and working on roughly a bazillion CD and DVD drives, cleaning the lens was done because it was on the checklist, but unless there was some gunk obviously stuck on it cleaning the lens did pretty much nothing. The spinning disc creates air movement which will tend to clear loose dust off all by itself. Tuning the power on the laser and the gain on the pickup was far more effective, but not all devices easily allow for that, and turning up the laser power is a stopgap that will work for the present, but failure is inevitable.
Not really, he paid £500 for this haul and a standard HiMD player in good working order can be bought on Ebay for around £120-£200 depending on cosmetic condition and accessories. Sure some of the more sought after models go for more but the more basic ones such as the NH600 or NH700 can even go for less if it's a bare bones unit.
I'm a fan of "percussive maintenance" on electro-mechanical devices. 25 years ago when I was an intern (at a famous insurance company known for sponsoring wildlife shows) someone in the IT repair department had figured out that it was statistically beneficial to "lightly drop" certain brands of printers and monitors when they were brought in for repair.
MiniDiscs passed me by, never even seen one for real, ripped all my CDs to MP3 20 years ago - which coincidently, today is the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Apple iPod 🤓 Interesting video though!
At what bitrate? I did that too at 192AAC after doing my own A/B test to determine where to my ears the compressed sound was transparent to the original. Turns out my process was flawed and I have spent years re-ripping/downloading in ALAC (can be losslessly conveyed to FLAC)
If your ever looking to get rid of the broken machines Im sure Colin from "This Does Not Compute" would be happy to accept them. Hes diagnosed and fixed a bunch of players on his youtube channel.
Interesting video. I've got a telephone that I had forgotten the batteries inside, and they had leaked. Luckily, it was a sort of dry leak that didn't spread, but I did have to open it up to chase the corrosion crumbs out. White vinegar is what I typically use, and of course I also have some contact cleaner. I bought white vinegar on a recommendation for testing aluminium for magnesium content. Scratch the surface, add vinegar, and if it bubbles, magnesium may be present, and thus unsuitable for melting without an inert gas to keep it from causing an unquenchable fire.
As long as you do it an odd number of times, you can do it endlessly. ;) (Though perhaps RUclips's AI will get tired of you doing so, and think you are a badly written bot 😏)
Right? I wonder what happened to mine every time I see one of these videos. My basement flooded probably a decade or so back and we just tossed everything that got wet... I fear my Sony MD was in the lot of stuff that got soaked :(
I don’t know why but ever since you started with theses MD players. I have been mesmerized by them. I know they are obsolete when compared to smartphones, iPods, and high end music players like Fiio. But something about the MD thst wants me to get at least one. Sony knew how to design players to look good. Maybe one day I will pick one up.. again thanks for doing this and showing me a new passion
Minidisc format is very popular in the UK, because in the UK they sold lots of prerecorded minidiscs over the years. That makes sense having up to 100 MD walkmans.
Me: “Perhaps Mat buying and repairing 100 MD players is just a bit too much?” 🤔
Luther Vandross: 🎶 “Never too much, never too much, never too much…” 🎵
When life gives you lemons, clean your Minidisc player 🍋
Don't make life take the lemons back? Don't demand to see life's manager?
@@CathyInBlue Nah.
I'd probably just bake some lemon cake.
Not gonna lie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@CathyInBlue
Oh I demand to see life's manager almost daily, but that guy's a wily one and hasn't made an appearance yet. Starting to wonder a bit . . . .
@@CathyInBlue Don’t have the scientists develop a lemon that can burn your house down?
Any time you get a salvage rate over 50% from a total grab bag, you've done well.
Yes, but at roughly £50 each it’s not quite a bargain!
@@themlotproductions £50? I thought it worked out to more like £10 per working unit when it was all said and done, and a couple of the salvaged units are really nice recorders.
I find them regularly at the recycling center and they pretty much all work, I also find 7/8th gen i7/i5 laptops that work. It's surprising how people don't care about outdated but perfectly fine tech stuff.
@@LaurentiusTriarius At least MiniDisc requires actual discs which are kind of rare -- unlike that 7th/8th gen laptop, which isn't obsolete by any stretch. I'm typing this on a 3rd gen Celeron! I should hang around your recycling center and snag an upgrade or three.
Indeed. I know Techmoan said not to buy these lots, but I'm still tempted by one of these lots. My Dad wants to split a lot with me at some point, so I want to try one out for fun.
SONY: "wow look at how many minidisc players are being bought amd how much buzz their is about minidisc. Perhaps it's makeing a comeback?"
Matt: "today I'm cleaning 100 minidisc players"
I love how initially laid out all your repair materials but half way through you resorted to giving it a whack. Your videos are a Saturday highlight - cheers.
👋💥
"Percussive maintenance"
Out of curiosity, if a machine relies on a spinning motor that's having trouble getting its spin starting, wouldn't it be possible that a good whack might just be the kickstart it needs?
@@kevwang0712 Just like an old car might need a damn good thrashing from time to time.
Giving it a whack is not as wacky as it may sound! I have noticed that the biggest problem with my old Sharp MD player (besides the gumstick battery being deader than dead after all these years) is that the carriage can get stuck when it hasn't moved for a long time. A good whack will usually remedy this.
*This is the most Techmoan thing I've ever seen*
It does exemplify the paradigm, doesn't it?
Totally🤣
yes totally certifiable :] and REALLY fun
Haha, back in the high times of MD I was working as a repair technician for Sony, you would not believe how many devices were sent in for repair and just had the hold button in the locked position - we even had a special card that explained what the hold button does :-D
For the full early 2000's experience I recommend connecting one of the MD players to a Playstation 2 via the optical out and recording game music so you can listen to it later.
Many good memories of recording MSX FM from GTA3 to Hi-MD via the optical out
This is how I recorded all of my music back in the day!
Some of the ones with a TOC read error may have a similar issue to mine which was sat unused for over 10 years... the motor for the read head had seized.
I lubricated the Worm gear and gently moved the read head back and forward numerous times by hand to try and unsieze it. Worked for a while but seemed to seize again 20 or so minutes into a disc so I re-opened it, cleaned the worm gear with IPA, re-lubricated and manipulated the read head again and it has worked perfectly since
Good work!
I’ll have to give that a shot. I refuse to condemn my Sony MD deck to the trashbin.
Took me a while to work out why International-Style Pale Ale was useful in this, but Isopropyl Alcohol is probably more useful
@@ujustgotpwned2008 Exactly what I was thinking
Lemon smells better than white vinegar! Good tip, thanks.
Citric amd ascorbic acid vs acetic acid - basic chemistry classes teach them all.
But lemon juice contains a lot of sugar. Make sure to rinse it off with an appropiate amount of destilled water.
@@JamesTK Might I suggest Chlorine Triflouride instead? Its just more convenient
@@senorcapitandiogenes2068 if you are using pure lemon juice then no it doesn't contain a lot of sugar. Lemons have a low sugar content
After watching your efforts with contact cleaning I got motivated to clean/change the batteries in my lounge wall clock. Thanks Mat!
Dude 😆
All ready for when the clocks go back
Jajajaja.
The way most of the Sony devices work is that the lid of the gumstick battery bay, with the positive contact, connects to the chassis through the hinge - if the hinge has corrosion in it, there is a good chance it won't connect. This can be tested using a multimeter between the battery terminal and the terminal for the external battery case as these are wired in parallel.
Thanks for the great videos as always.
"Schrödinger's mini disc" - priceless!
What is it about MD that still fascinates us!!! The amount of variations of design is amazing. Some great looking machines you’ve got there. Great video from a fellow MD lover! 💽
In all my years of troubleshooting and repair, I've learned that "dirty laser lenses" is kind of a myth. Unless it was one of those stereo/boombox types with the lid that opened fully and some kid with jam hands was getting the lens all sticky with boogers and whatnot, then cleaning the laser lens is more or less a lesson in futility.
Kind of like how when I clean my glasses, I somehow gain perfect eyesight. lol
@@russelllukenbill No because glasses genuinely do get dirty. Water, dust, and other gunk gets all over the lenses since they're exposed 24/7
@@testname4464 Yes, but they rarely get dirty enough that you can't make out what it is your seeing, it is just a little blurry or whatever. I can't remember the last time that my glasses were so dirty that I couldn't see out of them at all, except when coming in from outside and they fog for a few minutes, but that is not the same thing.
@@russelllukenbill What kinda perfect world do you live in? I have to clean my glasses every few days or else everything gets blurry
@@testname4464 I don't know what to tell you. I didn't say that I never clean my glasses, I said that they don't get dirty enough for me not to be able to see out of them entirely. Blurry is not the same as complete obstructed. I obviously live in the same world as you and it certainly isn't perfect. I won't keep arguing this with you, have a nice life.
I'd strongly advise using IPA after the lemon juice, organic residue left on it will cause problems again in short order.
Indeed, clear vinegar is a better choice.
Organic Residue seems like a nice band name.
@@VinnytotheK It sounds more to me like a term used in a bad hotel review
@@pand3mic942 😧
India Pale Ale?
Hey Techmoan, I work on a lot of CD drives for game consoles and one of the surprise culprits for them has been the sensor switches for lid, media or laser positions. These are usually little pressure lever based microswitches. Using the youtube standard deoxit I've had a lot of success cleaning these switches and watching the devices spring back to life. They seem to be prone to oxidization.
It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if some of these mini disc players have a sensor switch or two gummed up from the elements and are in need of contact restoration. Try it if you can, but shield sensitive elements like the laser lens from the spray.
19:56 my Sony D-35 Discman had an episode of "scrambled buttons" that turned out to be a dirty hold switch that was making partial contact - a bit of exercise & it came good, thankfully.
Some machines have a two wire control where different resistors are connected to request different actions. A dirty contact somewhere is going to throw off those values enough that buttons end up doing something other than what they are labeled for. This may be a fairly simple fix.
It's amazing how many different MiniDisc player designs were actually made and sold - outside the USA anyway. My SHARP unit still works, and takes AA batteries instead of using a "gum stick".
He said “you ain’t getting any of my mini disc players!” 😆 and I resonate with that
Fascinating video! I am SO impressed by your patience and persistence! I am now *really* annoyed I gave away all my MD stuff. Absolutely perfect for community radio.
Or use a phone....
I bought MD recoder because I was interested in minidisc after seeing your past video, and I bought junk condition Sony netMD with battery terminal corroded because I did not want to spend a lot of money on discontinued devices. This was easily removed with a home rust remover containing phosphoric acid and then operated perfectly
I wonder why we love these MD videos so much? I dont get it..but here I am, watching and wanting one for no reason other than they look cool and you make them seem really interesting.
I don’t have the time, money, or space to do what he did so I feel like I’m living vicariously watching him go through all the MD player models and try to fix them.
To me they seem like the perfect technology for the moment. In an age of subscription where we own nothing, physical media is making a comeback, and minidisc seems like the perfect compromise between the sound quality of CD and the portability and read/write abilities of cassette tapes. I’m not good at fixing and troubleshooting old tech, but if they started making these again I would purchase one.
wow I like how fiercely you ended up staying on this topic and turned this into a series even very awesome especially also and as for me to see since I skipped that minidisc thing back in the day so all the more nice to see what it was about as for the now retro tech . . .
Not quite sure why I watched the whole of this video and enjoyed it.
It’s just some guy in England importing a pile of Japanese junk and going through it piece by piece.
I guess Techmoan does it so we don’t have to.
I genuinely love it. 😁
Shakespeare was just some guy in England who wrote stuff.
You know why.
Techmoan does it because we CAN'T!
Not a bad result in the end, just shows how contact cleaner can help!
Personally, I use De-ox it, it's not cheap but will save devices for years... Bad battery contacts, switches, pots, etc.
It's been worth it's weight in gold over the years, saved many portables, amps, etc.
"The things are blind; they can't see the disc at all."
That made me laugh harder than it should have.
Great to see so many of them working. This is just the type of thing I would spend a week on lol.
All Hail the Mighty Lemon 👐
Excellent weekend viewing whilst doing my soldering. Honestly amazed that any of these kinds of micro devices still work at all. Tempted to buy one myself. Some seem bomb proof.
Suggestion: you might want to neutralize that lemon acid on the device when you are done cleaning, otherwise it may cause unwanted corrosion over time.
Do you know that from bitter experience?
@@chaos.corner Kind of sours the deal, doesn't it.
Maybe you just bought a lemon
The simple solution is to use partially corroded batteries so that the leaking alkaline neutralises the lemon juice.... 🤔
🤣😂🤣
Thanks for your great videos. As a 30 year, retired veteran of the Australian audio industry, youve shown me things that ive never heard of, let alone seen. Inwas, vaguely familiar with the Philips ski slope, but i dont remember actually seeing one. But then,these days, i dont remeber a lot of things. Cheers & keep up the good work. After 30 years in the business, it gets in your blood & I’ll always be interested in old stuff.
I was happy about the MD players that work. Then you dropped the bomb "I'm not selling them to you" and my heart shattered and broke into a million bits. 😢
10 hours! You have the patience of a saint. Great stuff, love your videos, keep up the good work (because I wouldn't have the patience - and neither would the wife).
You might have one of the largest collections of working MiniDisc players in the world.
@@plan7a also Techmoan :)
Great video and I really enjoyed seeing the outcome from the previous video.
I never did own a Minidisc and have no plans to, but still interesting.
A lot of the Sony MD players have a hidden service menu where you can do laser and magnetic diagnostics. Some of the older portable recorders might play discs but will fail / choppy audio when trying to record.
How do you access it?
I've also had a problem on a couple units where any edit to the TOC (even just renaming or moving a track without recording anything new) corrupts the whole TOC and makes the disc unreadable. I assume this would only apply to recorders, too, since the players don't have any TOC editing ability.
You can find the way in the user manual. Just find the pdf you need. I fixed some TOC issues that way. But not for long !
For the mz-r55 it’s like the conami code 😂 ff ww ff ww ff ww vol up vol down play pause play pause 😂 (FYI that isn’t the actual code, look for the service manual for your player the see how to access the diagnostics menu)
A thing to consider is that very very thin dust that comes from jean’s pockets. Especially those thin devices that goes often on pockets. The dust sneaks in the optical assembly, on the prism and make the reading to fail (TOC errors, or erratic play after some lucky attempts).
I and many of my friends had them in the day. There's a reason the corners are often worn. The corner smack was common to unjam the micro motor that spun the disc, or the carriage. I had a sony recorder and it failed once. One slap and it was sorted.
Depends what one considers 'working'. Most of the old portables will play fine, but recording correctly, that's a whole different ballgame. Because in that case, the very frilly magnetic head that touches the top layer of the disc needs to still be perfectly aligned with the last underneath the disc, the tiny flat cable not broken and the magnetic head not clogged with dust/dirt.
one of the purest hobbyist channels on youtube. thank you for your vids.
The more videos you do on the MD format, the more I'm obsessed with it, Mat! I really love MDs, and I really want to get a Hi-Fi or Mini Hi-Fi MD player that can record discs with the metadata included, as well as a bunch of recordable discs and start burning them with my favourite music. I'll then take those discs, along with any pre-recorded albums I can get hold of, and play them on a portable MD player, making that my primary listening device when I'm out and about (whenever that becomes a thing again without lockdowns and such). I dunno if you're planning to do any more videos on MDs, but if you do, I'm looking forward to them!
Glad to see that the majority of the players worked! Thank you for sharing the experience!
You’re an amazing man! I enjoy watching your RUclips videos so much. Kind regards from a French man living in Japan!
こんにちわ、monsieur.
I could watch Mini-Disc vids all day long.
Just a perfect use of technology.
Useful, compact, user friendly. Loved the the whole thing.
"Because these two pegs here where the power goes through, certain machines have them at different widths to one another"
That's the most Sony thing ever
Yeah, if Sony want to know why they fell out of favour with a lot of people they only need to look at the nonsense they were playing with their power adapters and memory cards in the early 2000s.
@@MarquisDeSang It has nothing to do with the tolerances, Sony of that era would just make random changes to power adapters between device revisions for no reason.
I've never been impressed with Sony stuff. And endless proprietary connectors, batteries and file formats just make it look even less appealing
@@smorris12 Sony was awesome bang for the buck in the late 1970s through the 1980s. In spite of Beta/max... But their success really started going to their heads and in the 1990s onward they not only got too expensive, they went crazy with proprietary everything.
Unfortunately, that seems to be the rule. Every company that starts out with great products at reasonable prices seems to sooner rather than later get cocky and start doing everything wrong.
@@awo1fman They get carried away with their own hype I suppose. I had a friend who spent a fortune on high end Sony stuff in the 90s and the reliability was appalling.
I picked up a minidisc player at a thrift store and before I could do much with it, someone stole it (and the rest of my work bag). Much more recently I found a Sony MZ-NH1 and with its lil docking station at a goodwill, and because it didn't have a power cord it was very cheap. Thanks to your video I just learned it does Hi-MD, came with a 1gig disc and has a LIP-4WM battery (a variation on the gum stick battery). I thought it had a built in battery till now.
That is quite the collection you have. I never realized how many different companies and models of portable minidisc players there were. Good luck on the dead ones if you keep working on them, and congrats on the working ones.
Great video! Huge amount of time required to test and clean all of those!
One of my favorite formats of all time. Bang up video!
going through all of those broken MD players reminded me of the prison scene from A Fistful of Yen
"who are they?"
"Just lost drunken men who don't know where they are and no longer care"
"And these?"
"These are lost drunken men who don't know where they are, but do care!
And these are men who know where they are and care, but don't drink."
That's from Kentucky Fried Movie, the parody.
Your channel is a blessing. It's informative and helps me avoid buying junk just because I think I can fix it. Thank you!
If you have to ask “why?” Then you’ll never get techmoan. Brilliant stuff Matt.
As alway, thanks for creating.
The only answer to “why” is “because Techmoan”, and that's why we're all here.
@@inshadowz indubitably!
I use white vinegar instead of lemon juice.
I was thinking it would be close to 50/50, but I'm glad to see the numbers were in your favor. Bravo.
Misbehaving buttons happens to various Sony things. I think they must use a resistor ladder affair (*) and grot under the contacts affects the resistance.
* All the switches are paralleled together, each with their own resistor in series. The processor measures the voltage on an analogue input to then determine which button is pressed
Neat trick, used it on some of my MCU projects where I had a free ADC pin but not enough digital ones to make a matrix. Tho I do wonder why would they go with this strategy for like 5 buttons or so, even tho that's kinda a good quantity to use this technique for (too many and they will most certainly fail).
@@Kalvinjj My mother has a Sony radio/cd thing in the kitchen which gets continual use. Both unit and remote control buttons are temperamental but it took well over 10 years to manifest itself so I have to admit that that's definitely "good enough" from a manufacturer
Because of your video, I went to check out all the MD portables I have. I have gotten 20 over the years 18 regular recorder/players, and 2 HiMD Sonys. All but 1 were Sony mopdels. After checking all of them (and thank you for the lemon juice to clean corroded battery contact idea), I have 15 that work with the AC adapter (I didn't check with a battery except for the one non Sony model which also worked) 3 that tried to read but couldn't, and 2 that I was unable to open at all. Thanks again for the video!!
Just a couple of notes from my CD experiences:
1) The external battery packs: you mention that some of them don't line up, being too narrow or too wide; I had one that those contacts could be slid along a channel to line up.
It wasn't an official sony or other name brand product, I recall is was an off-brand, universal type of thing. Not sure if any of yours may have that option, or if you could even come across one on an auction site.
2) The Lens Cleaning Discs: first of all, that lens cleaner with the ribbon that you wiggle, with the little brush on the disc--that is how all CD lens cleaners work, they all have a brush of some kind stuck to the disc to spin around on the laser.
If you opened up that official sony lens cleaning disc, you would (i'm 99.9% sure) find a little brush affixed to the disc in the same manner.
Also, with my cd-lens cleaners, I always put a drop of isopropyl/rubbing alcohol on that little brush before i put the cd into to the player. It always seemed to get the player working for a good while before needing cleaned again.
I love videos, like this one, where the presenter really loves their subject and their enthusiasm shines through.
As always, very educational and engaging, with essentially a science experiment (demo of the lemon juice) thrown in.
Just lovely Matt. You're the best
The madness of the 'barely different' battery adapters makes me seethe.
Recall seeing these for sale in many places outside the U.S., while traveling in the 90's. They were always rather costly, and many still are if you can find them on an auction site, usually missing the key ingredients necessary for them to work. That kind of explains why so many reached out to you for a proper trouble shot MD Player, since your doing all the work of getting them to operate for them. Great content. Thanks for sharing.
If I had the space and the knowledge (and the money) to do what Techmoan does, I’d be a very happy man.
Well done! You sure did a great effort salvaging those lovely machines. MiniDisc was the format that made listening to music both easy and fun!
Schrödinger's mini disc!
I love it. You could probably test a few of those with some test leads wired to a battery or power supply.
Your Vidz are so refreshing and fun. Please never stop!! MD was my favorite format ever!! I get it....we can get all songs now...but ....back in the day you'd had to choose!!!
Call me a fruitcake but I absolutely love these used MD review videos! Please buy more!
Long MD videos have become a monthly thing for me now, either new or rewatched old, I hope there's more to come!
Loved the follow-up video and great to see quite a few working. Preparations for the collapse of the global economy when Mini-disk players become a currency is well under way!!!
Better than bottle caps!
What kind of a apocalypse would use minidiscs player as currency lol
This man now has the biggest Minidisc collection in the UK.
I know its like 20 pounds for a tiny can, but the full strength "d100" deoxit whips through the really crusty green contacts pretty well.
I just use some random cheap brand they sell at the store. It works great.
@@tarstarkusz from my experience, the spray stains some plastic finishes, but the brush on stuff hasn't been a problem. I last used the spray about 15 years ago, so they may have changed the formulation.
I work in a job where nobody cares about discolored plastic and time is of the essence. Thanks though, didnt know it could discolour some plastics. Haven't experienced that, myself.
I used vinegar on my Minidisc player that had had a battery go bad in it. Worked a treat
@@tarstarkusz yeah, i primarily use it on electronics with metal chassis, vacuum tube sockets, and automotive connectors.
Edit: they sell a different formula of it specifically for pots and faders.
So 50% of them work just fine. 10% work with some outside help. Not bad for a auction buy of this kind. I bought a bunch of electric train stuff and all but 2 pieces did not work nor were they repairable. A fine haul Techmoan.
Hey Matt, great vid as always! From my personal experience I'd recommend using white vinegar over lemon juice, there's a lot less residue and impurities that get left behind.
+1, Fixed up a bunch of stuff with the vinegar.
+1 here too. Actually managed to get a "frozen" 9V alkaline battery's contact free from a unit's connector with a bit of a soak in a tiny dish of cleaning vinegar (6% acidity rather than the usual 5%, not much difference really)
Glad you were able to get a few of them working. Thank you for sharing! It was neat to see all the different styles there were..
"These hold one gigabyte; wow, it's the future isin't it!?" 🤣
It was!
For leaking damages, i use break disc cleaning spray on a bit of grinding cloth. Works every time.
"BUt wHY dId yOU bUY ALl thEse, thERE arE OTheR pEOplE wHO mIGht waNT tHeM?"
Obviously nobody could appreciate these MD players like Techmoan.
I really want an MD player too but obviously yeah he's more of an expert of these, I dont even have a single MiniDisc to even record on or even a device to do so. Hopefully I find some though
Very cool to watch. Love when old/dead tech is resurrected!
i was lucky enough a while ago to find a portable mini disc player/recorder.. it sounds good. also bought an optical cable for it to record . pretty decent. I do have to admit that I have a little envy for the stacks of awesomeness you have there !.
Techmoan, you should have picked a single grand winner and then made a separate 5 minute video about it.
Schrödinger's minidiscs indeed. Good old Techmoan! Looking forward to the *next* job lot of MD players (assuming old Mat hasn't bought them all already...).
Bought a Porsche Boxster from new (back in the day) and insisted on having the factory fitted MD player as I was so into minidiscs. Kept the car for 16 years and felt obliged to pass on all my minidisc equipment to the purchaser when I sold the car. Wish I’d kept some of it. It was a great format
Matt, the Sony at 8:37 may not like that battery (I used the same fleabay specials). One of mine (I can't remember which one) did the same. Furthermore, I can't remember where I read it but I had to drill a dimple in the base of the battery for it to work without issue. I think there is a very crude but descrete microswitch on the battery flap. I've moved house twice since I last saw any of my portables and I still have several boxes to unpack.
Now I've finished the video, it's good to see you got it working. I really need to find my missing portables.
Having worked at a repair/refurb facility long ago for several years and working on roughly a bazillion CD and DVD drives, cleaning the lens was done because it was on the checklist, but unless there was some gunk obviously stuck on it cleaning the lens did pretty much nothing. The spinning disc creates air movement which will tend to clear loose dust off all by itself. Tuning the power on the laser and the gain on the pickup was far more effective, but not all devices easily allow for that, and turning up the laser power is a stopgap that will work for the present, but failure is inevitable.
Honestly just having the high-md one working would make this entire endeavor a success in my book
Not really, he paid £500 for this haul and a standard HiMD player in good working order can be bought on Ebay for around £120-£200 depending on cosmetic condition and accessories. Sure some of the more sought after models go for more but the more basic ones such as the NH600 or NH700 can even go for less if it's a bare bones unit.
@@kevinh96 I was just saying for the sense of accomplishment
Wasn't that one not working on the initial attempts as well? Glad that it decided to wake up now!
I'm a fan of "percussive maintenance" on electro-mechanical devices. 25 years ago when I was an intern (at a famous insurance company known for sponsoring wildlife shows) someone in the IT repair department had figured out that it was statistically beneficial to "lightly drop" certain brands of printers and monitors when they were brought in for repair.
MiniDiscs passed me by, never even seen one for real, ripped all my CDs to MP3 20 years ago - which coincidently, today is the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Apple iPod 🤓 Interesting video though!
At what bitrate?
I did that too at 192AAC after doing my own A/B test to determine where to my ears the compressed sound was transparent to the original.
Turns out my process was flawed and I have spent years re-ripping/downloading in ALAC (can be losslessly conveyed to FLAC)
Aww I was so excited for a 10 hour Minidisc madness video!
If your ever looking to get rid of the broken machines Im sure Colin from "This Does Not Compute" would be happy to accept them. Hes diagnosed and fixed a bunch of players on his youtube channel.
Interesting video. I've got a telephone that I had forgotten the batteries inside, and they had leaked. Luckily, it was a sort of dry leak that didn't spread, but I did have to open it up to chase the corrosion crumbs out. White vinegar is what I typically use, and of course I also have some contact cleaner.
I bought white vinegar on a recommendation for testing aluminium for magnesium content. Scratch the surface, add vinegar, and if it bubbles, magnesium may be present, and thus unsuitable for melting without an inert gas to keep it from causing an unquenchable fire.
12:05 was definitely the opportunity to break out the 1-Grit
Dankpods reference
Definitely was
How did I not know these existed? They're so cute and little! Obsolete but cute!
As with so many Techmoan videos, I so want to keep hitting the upvote button. Trouble is, you can only do it the once - sad, but true.
As long as you do it an odd number of times, you can do it endlessly. ;)
(Though perhaps RUclips's AI will get tired of you doing so, and think you are a badly written bot 😏)
We’ll just have to upvote your comment to compensate…
I was an early adopter of the mini disc. I loved it. the matrix loved enough to use them as props in Neo's apt. (flat.)
When life gives you lemons clean corroded battery compartments with them
Very interesting video, I’ve still got my Sony minidisc man that I bought from new when it was launched and still works 😊
I love these videos about the MiniDisc format :-)
I had one of those discs with a brush on for CD players many years ago, it worked a treat.
These videos always make me nostalgic for my old minidisc player and making mixes.
Same here. I had a fancy-pants MD deck with keyboard for titling.
Right? I wonder what happened to mine every time I see one of these videos. My basement flooded probably a decade or so back and we just tossed everything that got wet... I fear my Sony MD was in the lot of stuff that got soaked :(
I don’t know why but ever since you started with theses MD players. I have been mesmerized by them. I know they are obsolete when compared to smartphones, iPods, and high end music players like Fiio. But something about the MD thst wants me to get at least one. Sony knew how to design players to look good. Maybe one day I will pick one up.. again thanks for doing this and showing me a new passion
Signed working machines as a top tier patreon reward?
Either way, great stuff as always!
Minidisc format is very popular in the UK, because in the UK they sold lots of prerecorded minidiscs over the years. That makes sense having up to 100 MD walkmans.