A MiniDisc Player for £10 - Will it work? What’s the catch?

this is the m0h walnuts the last of the line of sony's portable mini disc recorders it's a high md machine it came to the market in 2006 the culmination of 14 years of mini disc development beautifully constructed not much larger than a mini disc itself however when compared against this older machine it shows just how much smaller they could go and this wasn't even their smallest one it's just the smallest one that I own it's the mzd 900 they came out in 2000 it's just a player not a recorder and at that time when it came out it was so nice smallest mini disc player just four years earlier this was the smallest model and at that time this was described as the first shirt pocket sized mini display the smallest machines in the range were always the players because the models that recorded had to be larger to fit in all those extra components so playback only machines they use the model numbers the prefix MZ e while the recorders used MZ are usually each new revision of a mini disc design feature both a player and a recorder so when the MZ e 900 player came out there was also announced ed r 900 recorder that accompanied it playback only machines weren't all that common a sight here in the UK most people tended just to buy one do it's all device that would be a portable that could record it would be connected up to a PC or a Wi-Fi when it was in the house to record across new mini discs and then taken out of the house to play those discs and this is what they tended to sell the most of in the shops as well playback only machines they they hardly got to look in however it seems that in Japan things were a little bit different unsurprisingly they'd fully adopted the mini disc as their successor to the cassette and so use that in the same way and by that I mean your average cassette walkman well of course that was just a tape player not a recorder I mean you could buy recording Walkman models but the playback only once they were by far the most popular now most people would just record tapes at home on a separate tape recorder or on a high fine then play those back when you're out of the house on your Walkman and that's exactly the same thing that many people in Japan did with mini this you'd have a mini district order of her but while you're out and about you just carry around a nice neat play back only machine looking at the number of machines of each variety that were available on mini disks to org shows a wider variety of players than recorders now these are just the numbers for personal stereotype devices and for those there's a hundred and sixty-four players and a hundred and forty recorders if you've already got a recorder at home it makes sense just to carry around a player why cats about extra weight and bulk for features that you're never going to use and the same is true today you might find you don't need a portable recorder if you've already got a hi-fi component that can record many discs at home or perhaps you don't even want to record you just need a way to play back some old discs that you made back in the day or maybe you're just buying the new pre-recorded discs you might find that you don't need to record any at all therefore you're better off with a slimmer lighter and possibly cheaper player and just use this 900 model as an example the playback only one is almost half the weight of the recorder it's almost six millimeters thinner and the battery lasts 40% longer and as far as the price goes well just take a look at this I was browsing the Japanese auctions I saw this one an M said e 620 with a Buy Now price of 1320 yen how much is that well it's just under ten pounds and just over twelve dollars now of course it's not going to be perfect to that price it's missing a clip off the remote and more importantly it's being listed as junk which really means untested so it's a gamble but I thought well there's a gamble worth taking just to see if you really can get a working mini displayer for nine pounds 84 now normally I'd have to add on the shipping costs and the duties and well there might be some with this I really can't separate the merit because this player was shipped over as part of a much larger consignment so in reality probably added a very small almost negligible contribution to the overall import cost for that whole package anyway here it is it doesn't look too bad I've just got the remote and the player there's nothing else included with it there are a couple of light scuffs on the front although nothing too egregious that the back is a little bit worse but still perfectly acceptable all things considered you can see the logo for type s that's the final a track revision that was compatible with many discs and this model of player was only sold in Japan it came out there in 2003 I wanted an 8-track s machine though to complement my home recorder which also has that feature my MZ t-900 which dates from 2000 is an 8-track 3 machine although in its favor it is a more compact and premium feeling device by the time 2003 had rolled around though mini displays could no longer command the kind of prices that would make a machine like the 900 viable so getting back to this 620 is mentioned in the listing the remote is missing its clip it hasn't been stopped off though as you can see from this similar remote that I've got for the rh1 that clip is designed to be removed it's just gone missing somewhere you can see the remote has seen quite a bit of use the screen on it is very scuffed up possibly from rubbing against a zip on a jacket we've got to take a look at that screen later though the first thing to find out now is whether this thing can actually play a disc other than the remote are missing all the accessories now that includes a battery holder fortunately I've got a few of those lying around these things screw on to the bottom of the machine and they do add quite a lot of bulk to any mini display or it looks even sillier on this one it rather negates the points of having a small player but I'll put a disc in that contains YouTube audio library music and I notice that when that's inserted there's a red light that flashes on this side so it's looking hopeful and pressing play the light flashes again so something definitely seems to be happening let's plug in some speakers and see if there's any sound coming out [Music] yeah it's working and I went through all the features and those seemed to work as well there it's a little bit hard to see exactly what's going on on that scratched up screen but all the buttons are doing something both on the inline remote and on the back of the player itself but now I want to try this thing out with an internal battery instead now and it was knew it would have come with an NH 14 WM nickel metal hydride cell more commonly referred to as a gun stick battery that just slides neatly inside the machine so many don't make those kind of batteries anymore however fortunately some other companies do I use these vape X Browns ones and they work just fine and they are very expensive don't make the mistake of thinking that the old so new ones are somehow worth paying more for given their age they're very unlikely to hold a charge now when this machine was new the idea was that you'd charge the batteries up inside it the connector on the bottom of the player would attach up to a couple of pins in the bottom of a plastic cradle and in a 3 volt charge you would be connecting up to that cradle not having the cradle or the charger is a bit of an obstacle I suppose you could fashion some kind of adapter to connect up to those pins on the bottom of the player but you can also use an external gum stick battery charger over the years I've acquired quite a few of these from other Walkman models are bore I've got one with a UK plug another with a euro plug there's a nice folding one with a Japanese plug and that's only for a hundred volts though but more recently I bought one that charges from USB these charges aren't the easiest things to find though though they can get quite pricey as well in addition you've got to take extra care with the flimsy door cover when repeatedly removing or inserting the battery but now that's that scratch screed on the remote I've tried cleaning it that made no difference at all those are abrasions so I'm going to buff them out with brass so now I've covered this before but for anyone who hasn't seen it brass oh is a metal polish the abrasive nature of it on plastic scours off the top layer it's a little bit like using tea cuts on a car this is the Wadden version which is more suitable for devices like this there's a leak good version but that can sometimes seep into places it shouldn't now I wouldn't want to recommend this to everyone as the solution to every scratch device you might end up making it worse but in my case with this one just a quick rub on the screen and then a polish off with a microfiber cloth and the thing well it comes up basically as good as new it's so much easier to read the hair as well I didn't even notice that this thing had a battery meter on the left before and since this is the only display for the machine that gives there all the information it's important to be able to see this properly using the same technique on the glossy front of the player I managed to buff out most of the scratches however there isn't anything that can be done for the back of it because it's coated with a silver finish so the marks on here come more from gouges into the surface revealing the darker plastic below but overall I don't think I've done too badly considering the meager amount of spent on this of course the only reason it didn't cost me anymore was because I already had all the accessories and extras that are needed in the house for example if you needed to buy a battery case with all the ones on eBay today cost more than the player and then a gum stick battery well those don't cost too much book without the charging cradle you're gonna need a charger therefore if you go shopping for any machine it might be worth just paying a bit more in order to get one that comes with the accessories you need especially the cradle because buying them separately can sometimes prove difficult expensive or sometimes impossible to find the right part for the right machine but you know how earlier I mentioned I wasn't really factoring in any postage costs because this was sent over in a parcel with a load of other stuff well you can see some of the contents of that parcel on the screen now yeah in a moment of madness I seem to have bid on and won a massive bundle of random mini displays now I don't even know how many there are in here but if you're interested in seeing what models are gone and if any of them actually work well we can unwrap these together another day in another video but that's it for the moment as always thanks for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: Techmoan

Views: 403,795

Keywords: Techmoan, 4K, Minidisc, MD, Sony MD, MZ-E620, MZ-E900, Minidisc Players, Cheap, £10, Budget, Retro, Player, Recorder, mini disc, bargain, import, Japan, Type S, Personal Stereo, Walkman, Brasso, Scratch Repair

Id: 5ESOtY6KzZI

Length: 11min 16sec (676 seconds)

Published: Fri May 08 2020