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Hacking a Sony MDH-10 Drive to Read Audio Tracks?

Posted by Cliff on from the reading-your-digital-information dept.

Help Needed asks: "I recently purchased a Sony MDH-10 Data Drive, and am intrested in getting this drive to read the Audio Tracks as raw data, but all it shows is Okb for each track (similar to looking at a CD). Now, I understand the basic structure of the Disc, the TOC, the music format (ATRAC1, MDLP is ATRAC3), and the way the MO reads. What I am interested in is hacking the MD Data Drive to allow it to read from an Audio Disc. I know it can be done, but am unsure of how to access the firmware of the drive (currently prevents access to write to the tracks). You can go to my webpage to read a short explanation of my idea."

3 of 24 comments (clear)

  1. For those wondering... by dubl-u · · Score: 2
    For those wondering what the hell an MDH-10 is, I have a few leads. It appears to be an ancient Sony minidisc data drive.

    There seems to be no information on Sony sites in english, but there's an excellent page here:
    http://www.minidisc.org/part_Sony_MDH-10.html
    And you can find more information about it in the original reviews from Wired and Byte.
  2. Re:Output by lizrd · · Score: 2

    The point here isn't so much to be able to play music from this drive as it is to be able to rip minidiscs the way that you would rip a CD or write music direct to your minidisc in the same way that you might burn a CD to listen to in your car. If you want to listen to minidiscs in your car get a deck that supports it. I really like having minidiscs in the car, they have a shell on them like a 3.5" floppy disk that makes them much more difficult to scratch than CDs. It's true that they don't sound quite as good, but with a little road noise thrown in it's pretty hard to tell the difference.

    --
    I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
  3. Looks like they did it... by shumacher · · Score: 2
    Over at http://www.minidisc.org/miyadisc/faq.html find the following quote:
    How do you make the discs? With a normal Sony MDH-10 MD Data drive and a special program. 9. How did you figure out the UTOC format? By experimentation, and frequent glances at Wolfgang Buresch's MiniDisc Secrets and MiniDisc Analyzer pages. We eventually made a page describing the UTOC data structures we found
    So, it would appear someone has hacked this. The problem seems to be that they intend to use the hack for financial gain, so they may not share it with you.
    Good links there though.
    Good Luck!