MiniDisc Question.

[Bandit]

Hello Eveyone,
Anyone familar with Sony MiniDisc players?
I have had one for a long time and used to use it alot.
But now I dont so much and I was wondering if there was any PC disc drives that used the MiniDisc for data instead of music out there?
Thanks,
Joey

[briancurtin]

wow i just found my minidisc player today actually haha. i had one roughly a year or so after they came out, so its a bit bigger than most, but i loved it at the time.

i havent heard of any PC drives that used them though

[jason.b.c]

I was wondering if there was any PC disc drives that used the MiniDisc for data instead of music out there?

I've kinda wondered the same thing, though more along the lines of those new camcorders with the mini disk, its a dvd disk but mini, so what do ya play it in?
wouldn't it stuck in a conventional dvd player?:confused:

[mstlyevil]

I think I have my mini disk player in the same place I have my 8 tracks and my Beta-Max players.

[darkoptix]

They are the worst devices humans have created...
Since most are sony products, means no linux support. SonicStage is the program that has to be used. However, they have great battery life.

I use to own one, works pretty good besides the not being able to use in linux problem and having to convert music to put on it.

As for a drive that lets you use minidiscs as more of a data option. I think using the minidisc player, you can use that as a drive to record whatever onto. I think with some models anyways.

[briancurtin]

i never even connected mine to a computer, i just used an optical cable out the back of my stereo setup and ripped CDs straight onto it. that was back when MD was still barely known and i was a sophomore in high school not knowing anything about audio quality or file sizes, etc.

[purdy hate machine]

The latest generation of Sony HI-MD Mini-Disc recorders allow you to use the old disks as well as the new 1Gb disks for PC data storage. I have several MD machines knocking around at home which I have used in the past for recording my own compositions. The Sony Mini disc is a wonderful bit of hardware supremely let down by the fact that it uses both Sony’s ATRAK encoding system and the truly terrible Sonicstage software, making a port to Linux highly unlikely.
I have never tried plugging a HI-MD device into Linux to see if it is at least recognised as a removable storage device (as it does in windows) I’ll give it a go tonight just out of curiosity.

[Ultimo Aliento]

I was going to make a thread to ask about a mini-disc application for linux... i love my mini disc, i get a model that endure continue user abuse, and is resistant to water (resistant not inmune, i will never try to drop him on the sea or something like that) ... and have a 42 hours battery life... well, there is another reason to keep my Xp partition alive.

[prizrak]

There are used to be actual MD drives for computers but I haven't seen one sold in a while. Maybe you could find some on Ebay :)

[Bandit]

There are used to be actual MD drives for computers but I haven't seen one sold in a while. Maybe you could find some on Ebay :)
I think I will take a look. I new I thought I had seen one somewhere. But letley I have been loosing my mind and wasnt for sure.
Thanks,
Joey

[mcduck]

I also have one, bought it about a year after they were available here. So that was long before NetMD and SonicStage :) I also had a portable CD-player with optical output, so I could copy CD's to MD on-the-go :D Now the thing looks like somebody has driven a truck over it, but it still works. Altough I rarely use it to listen music any more. Only as a portable recorder.

There was some MD drives for PC, but CD-R and RW quickly made those irrelevant. MD's are very small, only 140MB compared to 650MB (or 800MB) of a CD-R, and minidisks even cost more..

The new Hi-MD is interesting though, it can store 305MB to those old normal minidisks and 1GB to Hi-MD disks. Too bad those are proprietary stuff (and crippled by that crappy SonicStage and DRM's). Sony can only blame itself for MD never really becoming a popular format..

[Sonique]

I used to have a MD player, before my brother trod on it and literally destroyed it into millions of pieces, or thats what he says.. :confused:

[xmastree]

Using MD for storage puts them up against zip drives, which already have an established user base. Not much point really.

[Bandit]

Using MD for storage puts them up against zip drives, which already have an established user base. Not much point really.
I just like looking kewll.. Ya know.. even tho I am getting to be a old fart I still wanna look kewl and l33t... :D
Beside I got tons of these disc setting around and dont use them anymore. I still got new ones in the package.

[purdy hate machine]

Well I plugged one of my old Hi-MD players into Ubuntu last night with surprising results. The player in question is the Sony MZ-NH600D, when connected via the USB cable Ubuntu automatically detected the player as a removable media device, auto mounted it and placed an icon onto my desktop. I didn’t have any of the 1Gb disks to play with so I inserted one of the standard blank 80 minute audio discs and clicked on the desktop icon, the drive showed the disk as having 269Mb of free space. I was then able to drag and drop files onto the drive and use it as a removable drive. I should point out this only works for data storage, you wont be able to drag and drop music onto the disk and then play it back on the player.

[xmastree]

Kewl! :D

My minidisk was made before they invented USB... :-?