Sony Mz-R30 Minidisc Walkman Player/recorder

[WillFly]

I was clearing out a tangle of wires and old equipment from a desk drawer this afternoon. Among the mess - most of which has been thrown out - I discovered my old Sony MZ-R30 Minidisc Player/recorder, complete with power lead and remote controller. I rooted around and found a small box of recorded discs.

The lithium battery was shot so I plugged in the power lead and inserted a disc labelled "Richard Thompson: Mock Tudor" and - lo! it worked first time. I'd forgotten how good the sound quality was so I checked the net, discovered that replacement batteries are available, and ordered one.

OK, it's old technology now - superseded by laptops and iPods for playback and equipment like the Zoom series for recording - but it's well made and still functioning after many years of lying in a drawer.

Glad I found it - now to find all those boxes of discs from years ago...

[ro63rto]

I used to have one of those.

Took it to a few Prince/The Time concerts along with a nice microphone.

Still got my HiFi deck to play the disks on too.

[Mark]

Somebody told me the other day that mini disk machines are still quite popular in professional studios - not sure how true that is.

[WillFly]

Yup - they're still in use here and there.

[bobm12]

Memories! Haven't head of those for quite a while! Wasn't there a Sci-fi movie showcasing it?

[ramrod]

i've gone through about 7 models of the mini disc. i absolutely love them. i always liked the fact that one AA battery lasts for, like, 55 hours or something crazy like that. gotta love sony products.

have you ever seen the "hacking" site for them? you can get the basic models to do most of what the high end models do just by hacking into it. it's really neat.