Never Stop Learning!

Maintenance isn't the most fun task, is it? Oil changes? Not fun, but certainly necessary for combustion engines. The same goes true for tiny, precision devices like MiniDisc player/recorders! Many of these are 20-30 years old and any lubrication they may have had when leaving the factory is dry/crusted/gone. Not to mention that some of these have been in dusty/linty/pet hair environments that could have gotten inside the device. Some quick inspection through the open door could allow you reach some simple dust with an alcohol-prepped cotton swab, but to actually clean and lubricate the gears and rail that the laser slide uses to slide back and forth to play your precious music will require taking the back cover off, at minimum. In this video, we'll look at the Sony MZ-N920, a 2004 model NetMD recorder from Sony that's fairly easy to get in and out of.  We'll get in, remove some ribbon cables, clean off anything old using isopropyl alcohol, and use small dabs of white l...

The Sony MZ-R700 is a fun MDLP player from 2001 that came in some nice colors like a metallic yellow. It was a cheaper version of the MZ-R900 so it was plastic and used AA batteries. I got one cheap on eBay that wouldn't power on and fixed that quickly by fixing the battery door contacts. After that, it turns out that it wasn't recording at all! Often with Sony recorders, that points to a write head failure (something along that delicate ribbon cable broke!) which can be a tricky fix. To troubleshoot, I opened up the player and tried recording while pushing down the write head (GENTLY) closer to the disc. It worked! The disc was recording as long as I was holding the write head close to the disc, so it had to be some other mechanism - something to lower and raise the write head, perhaps? After some research (and noticing a loose rod inside the device), it turns out I was missing a toothed metal gear that should be locking/unlocking the write head arm. This allows it to lower wh...

The Sony MZ-R2 was released in late 1993 and is a large, substantial MiniDisc recorder, similar in size to the Sharp MD-MS200 which came later. It's hefty, with a built-in display, and a slick slide-open control door on the top lid that has a satisfying "click" to it.  A friend sent me one of these to work on - it's in great shape overall, but it couldn't read discs, just displaying "DISC ERROR". It seems like a fairly common issue so I decided to start with the usual light cleaning (lens, dust, debris) but there wasn't anything glaringly wrong nor out of place. The laser sled was moving fine, so it was probably time to get into the service menu and make some adjustments. There's a good video online and 2 good references (listed below) and I've recorded a streamlined video here: Entering the Service Menu In a nutshell, you need to go in and adjust the laser settings from the service menu. What I didn't see online was that you will need to...

I've mentioned this before, but you never really know what you're going to get when you pick up "unconfirmed stuff" from Japan via Buyee. We make educated guesses to get stuff that's in decent condition or that maybe powers on via an AC adapter, but not via battery.  In this case, I ended up with a Sharp remote and an MD-ST70. These came in fun colors and many of the remotes had a backlight that matched the color of the player! In this case, these "brown" (referring to the base of the cord) ones don't seem to be backlit. I know the red/pink ones light up red and I'm going to get a yellow one to test soon! The player actually worked fine after the usual battery cleaning, but the remote kept doing something weird... Whenever you slid the Hold switch over, it would stop the playback and turn off the player! Obviously, that's a bit annoying since we want to be able to use the Hold switch if we put the player in a pocket or something and don't...

You never know what you're going to get when you buy something that's listed as "unconfirmed" or "junk" on Buyee - especially if they haven't even tested if it powers on! In this case, I thought it might be worth the risk for two MiniDisc devices, especially since one was a Sony MZ-N1 - one of my favorites and a Sony flagship portable recorder (from two decades ago). The first thing you'll want to check is power - via a gumstick and an external battery pack. If one of those power the device, then you'll know what the next step is. For example, if the gumstick doesn't work, but the external battery or power supply does, then you might just need to clean the battery contacts at the door or internally. In this case, I cleaned the battery door contacts, but it still wasn't powering up properly. Check out the video for a quick fix that I didn't expect. Also, at the end of the video you'll see my other Sony MZ-N1s with dock adapters. Th...