Re: [linux-minidisc] Presentation and issues with mz-n710

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de>]

Hi,

On Sep 16, 2011, at 12:07 AM, Enrique Medina Gremaldos wrote:

> Hi folks, I've recently bought a pair of used minidisc recorders from ebay. A Mz-ne410 and a Mz-n710, both of them netmd. I have no Windows partition at home, so I've decided to give python-netmd a try. Mz-Ne410 works great, I can download songs from command line and list them. Great! Problem comes with mz-n710

Please use libnetmd/netmdcli instead. We are primarily focussing on libnetmd now and not
so much on python-netmd. Some of the code in python-netmd, especially the download
code is quite hacky, so unexpected results can occur with various MiniDisc hardware.

> When trying to download a song, some mechanical parts start moving inside recorder, and then word ERROR blinks on LCD and recorder shuts down. Due to its old age, I thought It was caused by a problem with laser calibration or a short circuit with usb ground. Think is, device can record from mic! so, can't be a laser problem.
> 
> I decided to take another test, and tried to download a track to a blankdisk, and it worked! But only for the first track, downloading a second one causes recorder to complain with generic ERROR message. 

I think we have had this issue before. Some recorders need an extra Reset command to
be sent through NetMD, if I remember correctly. I am sure the libnetmd code does this,
but I don't know about python-netmd. As I said, it's quite hacky.

> The funny thing is that I can reproduce all of that on a Windows environment with SonicStage 4.3 (the only one I could find) !!!

This is indeed interesting, it should definitely work with SonicStage. Have you tried
recording another track manually over line-in/microphone after the first NetMD
track?

> Maybe my mz-n710 has a corrupted firmware and all this feedback is useless. At least I can grant mz-ne410 works like a charm.

I would highly doubt that. Some Walkman had indeed some firmware issues, but Sony updated
the firmware of those devices for free. Or, since you said you bought the Walkman used, the
previous owner messed around with the firmware. However, I rather think it's a problem
with NetMD itself.

Please try libnetmd/netmdcli first and report back.

Adrian