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Gear / Technical Help => Recording Gear => Topic started by: yug du nord on October 05, 2008, 02:02:37 PM

Title: HiMD mechanical troubles......
Post by: yug du nord on October 05, 2008, 02:02:37 PM: I had my Sony MZ-RH10 HiMD recorder connected to the computer via USB last night for transferring purposes... and all of a sudden, it stopped transferring and the display on the recorder read "ACCESS ERROR". So, I disconnected it from the PC... and took the disc out. And from that point on, whenever I put a disc in... the display reads "NO DISC". The disc does not register and doesn't even spin (at least I can't hear it fire up). I have been using Sony HiMD/MD units for the past 6+ years, and have never had this happen to me before. Has anyone else ever encountered this? Any suggestions? I think that I can send it into Sony for a repair/swap, but at a significant cost... so it might finally be time to retire the HiMD format (kinda, as I still have another HiMD deck)... and move up to a 24bit flash/solid state hand-held.

Any suggestions? Thanks!
Title: Re: HiMD mechanical troubles......
Post by: boojum on October 06, 2008, 04:13:58 PM: This has not happened to me, yet. HiMD is a great format for recording to WAV with a tiny and good machine. It is also a "mature" product. I do not think SONY is going to invest much in it anymore. It may be time to move on.

Cheers
Title: Re: HiMD mechanical troubles......
Post by: nameloc01 on October 06, 2008, 05:50:04 PM: There is much wisdom here:

www.minidisc.org
Title: Re: HiMD mechanical troubles......
Post by: sunjan on October 16, 2008, 05:06:58 PM: Quote from: uncleyug on October 05, 2008, 02:02:37 PM
I had my Sony MZ-RH10 HiMD recorder connected to the computer via USB last night for transferring purposes... and all of a sudden, it stopped transferring and the display on the recorder read "ACCESS ERROR". So, I disconnected it from the PC... and took the disc out. And from that point on, whenever I put a disc in... the display reads "NO DISC". The disc does not register and doesn't even spin (at least I can't hear it fire up). I have been using Sony HiMD/MD units for the past 6+ years, and have never had this happen to me before. Has anyone else ever encountered this? Any suggestions? I think that I can send it into Sony for a repair/swap, but at a significant cost...

It seems that this can be triggered by pulling the USB cable at the wrong time, there are also other anecdotes at minidisc.org indicating that this is a model/age-related issue.
For an ordinary user, the only thing you can do is a factory reset:
http://www.minidisc.org/sony_mzr_reset.html

This thread also mentions that a Sony repair shop might fix this easily with a firmware upgrade:
http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=12175

Depending on how much they'd charge, you might be better off picking up a second hand unit on Ebay for $100 or so. Or move on to solid state media. Zoom H2 starts at $200, R-09 just over $300. Take your pick...
Title: Re: HiMD mechanical troubles......
Post by: brad24bit on October 21, 2008, 11:24:13 AM: I had this problem years ago with a sony mz-rh910 hi-md transfer to my pc. I chalked it up as a loss, and read up on this problem. Basically don't do anything when you are transfering files via sonicstage. Don't have any other programs running, don't touch the md recorder, transfer and walk away.
Title: Re: HiMD mechanical troubles......
Post by: boojum on October 21, 2008, 01:21:10 PM: Now there is some good advice. That xfer option is flaky and fragile. Sometimes I think the whole package is written in BASIC. It could be improved with tight code or C, C+, C++ and Assembler routines. But, MD is a "mature product" with little or no future investment pending from SONY. Too bad as I live my little RH1,