[vcf-midatlantic] New topic: Mini disc recording

[Ethan O'Toole]

>  [NON-Text Body part not included]

> I don’t have much experience at this,
> has anybody in the group used a mini disk (MD) as recording media for 
> saving programs and loading programs?

I was a big minidisc user, mainly for dumping stuff from my SGI 
Indigo into a minidisc deck over coax digital then using it in the car. I 
actually have a MDS-E10 on my want list for VCF ;-)

When you say store programs, do you mean like dumping cassette files from 
8bit computers to minidisc? The original format was a ~130MB MO disc that 
usually held compressed audio using a codec called ATRAC. ATRAC 1 didn't 
get a lot of love which hurt the format in the USA but ATRAC 3 and 4 and 
stuff were fine.

There was a later HDMD disc that holds like 600MB and I believe there was 
a computer drive for that where you could store data. They are rare. Not 
sure if there was a direct computer storage drive for the 130MB discs?

Because Sony also owns a record label they are weak, and hurt the format 
by not making it better for piracy. Computer connected decks that could 
easily dump mp3s to them would have been really popular. They had the 
NetMD stuff but I think it was just a USB sound card that dumped it, and I 
don't know if it had easy titling or not.

Neat format though. The discs are cute.


 		- Ethan