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[Deleted member 22576]

woo! minidisc. Back before MP3 players could hold a reasonable amount of songs for cheap, Minidiscs were what I used to make my computer playlists portable. I wanted a step up from tapes.

I just recorded everything with analog line out from my PC. I added track names to the songs on the disc on the player itself using the jog dial. Man… it took so much time.

I had this Kenwood DMC K9R recorder. Got it in 1998 (imported from Hong Kong by a friend of mine) and used it pretty much every day until I got my first ipod in 2005. I still have it in a desk drawer along with around a dozen discs with lots of mid 90s, early 2000s pop hits.

look at that extended battery pack!

Those extended battery packs have ended up being one of the best parts of the MD legacy. The units I have with the crazy unique gumstick nickel metal hydride batteries are all kaput. Well, the batteries are. But I can still just run it off an eneloop if I want to.

 

[FnordChan]

God, I loved my beautiful blue MZ-R70 so much. I remember researching the hell out of the format and finally breaking down to order the R70 from Minidisco in 1999, then using it daily through late 2005 when I was given my first iPod. Also, until a few years ago the college radio station I volunteer with still had MD decks in place and used MDs for IDs and so forth.

I got a head start on all this MD nostalgia last year when I dug up my player and kept it in the car with a rotating handful of discs to crank up in lieu of MP3s. Since manually titling each track was an incredible pain in the ass I almost never bothered to do so, which meant that while I was popping in unlabelled mixes and wallowing in nostalgia I'd occasionally run into a track I hadn't heard in over a decade and could not identify without frantic Googling; this is how I recently rediscovered Talent Mafia's track "Strictly Digital' from Cat Compilation II. There were also lots of moments of "Boy, I used to really love X-Japan" and "Oh, hey, another anime theme mix".

Inspired by this thread I ordered an optical cable, plugged it into the PS3, dug up an 80 minute Sony Neige blank, and just recorded my first new MD - a copy of a CD mix I made this past Halloween - in almost a decade. It felt great.

So...who's up for a MiniDisc mix exchange?

FnordChan

 

[Clipse]

I seem to recall that if you were recording, the push button to open on the R55 became softer, as if the mechanism/spring behind it had disappeared. I believe it prevented you from opening the device while it was burning to the disc. It's a very faint memory though... I may have got that wrong.

Pretty sure you're correct. I vaguely remember the button working like that.

It also might've been the red Hold switch that disabled the open button.