Also, I need advice on powering it. What's the most economical way? Why do I suddenly feel like a newbie?
I couldn't find that page in the Oade archive. It was really good to. It had pictures and all. I did snip this of an old dat-heads digest:
WHAT I DID:
Bought a 4 C battery holder from Radio shack ($2 or so) and a 2 C
battery holder as well ($2 or so). I clumsily duct taped them back to back
to make them easy to carry ($.05 or so). I cut the yellow plug off of a
spare AC adapter I had (from a sony discman that fit the D3) and wired the
batteries in series,) to the plug. I tried to use a
male/female connector as recommended to me at first but I couldn't get a
reliable connection out of the cheap .99 cent radio shack parts. Are their
higher quality parts than those cheap white plastic ones? I would
eventually like a detatchable plug.
A little duct tape later over the soldering job (very sloppy) and
I had a little pack about 3" thick and about 5" long that would fit into a
sock for travel. Any suggestions as to how to make a cool case for it that
would allow easy battery access?
It worked! and it powered my D3 for about 7 hours of playback and
recording with the backlight off. After 5 hours, the low batery indicator
came on but it still played back for 2 more hours. I powered my discman
(same plug) for some 5 more hours cause it needed less juice than the DAT.
So 30 minutes labor and $10 parts makes a battery pack that lasts for 7-8
hours. Take that Sony!
there's probably better info out there...if the d3/7/8 are all the same power requirements...I found a couple of sites dedicated to powering the d7/8. simple google search using:
d7 battery pack