Hi all,
I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really (can I stress that enough?!?), hope that someone can help me out with this one:
For those of you who do not have the time to read long items: the actual question (posed in more detail towards the end of this post) is if someone has a way a reading out Minidiscs with a probably corrupted TOC.
Then, to give the full picture (which may help explaining the issue), I have written down what happened in more detail down below:
The situation: for the better part of this year I've been testing my taping rig (a Sony MZ-R50 Minidisc with the ECM-717 mic), all in preparation for the big one: yesterday's Iron Maiden concert.
Smuggling the recorder, discs, battery pack and mic in, was a dooze. No sweat there. Also, I had properly set it up in the restrooms, I found an excellent sweet spot (centre view of the stage, some 20 metres out or so), and I had previously familiarised myself enough with all controls in order to make the recording process go as smoothly as possible.
But then, of course, the one thing I couldn't prepare for happened: mayhem broke loose in the recorder: All year long the recorder has had no issues, but exactly at the moment when it matters most, it messed up. I'm not certain what exactly happened, but as far as I could tell, the recorder taped Lauren Harris (the first opening act) just fine, after which I stopped the recorder and waited for Trivium (the second opening act). However, when trying to tape it, it gave me a 'Disc err' message, and I could not get that reset no matter what I did, so I fear that disc is broken and didn't record properly (or perhaps more likely: the TOC may be corrupt). Unfortunately I had made one mistake myself, which immediately backfired: I had accidentally left the emergency spare disc in the car stereo, instead of in the recorder. Hence, with no discs to spare, I could not fall back to another disc for the opening acts, and totally missed out on recording Trivium.
One disc down, two to go....
Then, on to the headliners: Iron Maiden.
The first IM disc recorded grand. No issues, and the disc swapping moment worked out just fine too, and I had it running again at the beginning of the next song, after around 70% of the show. It proceeded to record everything just fine (yes, I double checked that about 5 times or so), and when turning it off, the 'data save' pass went fine too, but the recorder somehow got stuck on the 'Writing TOC' part.
It just wouldn't respond to anything anymore, and I had to remove the battery in order to alleviate the issue.
I'm not certain what happened, as I haven't seen this happen before...
Now.... I write protected all discs anyway, and I tried them in the car stereo. Both discs that gave issues were spat out by the stereo. Upon coming home, I put them in the recorder to see what would happen, and the Lauren Harris one still says 'Disc err' (and doesn't want to play anything any way), and the other one just says 'Blank disc'.
((
Not good.
However...
I am hoping that perhaps the data of the Lauren Harris show (and the second part of IM) is still present on the disc in raw format. It seems that the recorder properly performed the 'data save' pass, and perhaps only the TOC is corrupt...
I'm not certain how bad that is, but it would seem to me that it is very well possible that the raw data is still there, and that perhaps it can be extracted with a proper Minidisc deck or so...
I *REALLY* hope someone can help me out with this...
If so, apart from my eternal gratitude, in return I can get you about any Iron Maiden show that has ever been taped...
Help!!! Please.....
Tnx heaps in advance for any suggestion or help, and cheers,
MM