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CBits Tech
United Kingdom
Приєднався 13 тра 2019
Minidisc, compact cassette, and other retro tech. How it looks, how it works, and how to fix it. Just an average bloke making it up as he goes along.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Lord of the Rings Memorabilia and Audio Collection
You can get ad-free, early access to most of my videos on Patreon on the lowest subscription they allow (£1 $1 €1 plus VAT/tax). There's even a free trial!
www.patreon.com/user?u=44805086
Chapters
00:00 LOTR Memorabilia
01:37 Audio Collection
07:11 Type I vs Type II cassettes.
08:46 The Hobbit
12:26 Next on CBits Tech
www.patreon.com/user?u=44805086
Chapters
00:00 LOTR Memorabilia
01:37 Audio Collection
07:11 Type I vs Type II cassettes.
08:46 The Hobbit
12:26 Next on CBits Tech
Переглядів: 202
Відео
Calculator Repair Fail
Переглядів 127День тому
I received an unwanted Casio FX-7400G with another calculator. A long time later, I conclude it's E-waste. You can get ad-free, early access to most of my videos on Patreon on the lowest subscription they allow (£1 $1 €1 plus VAT/tax). There's even a free trial! www.patreon.com/user?u=44805086
100s of Genuine Minidisc Labels
Переглядів 232Місяць тому
I unbox and a delivery of 100s of genuine minidisc labels from, mainly Maxel, but also TDK, Sony, and a few Sony Hi-MD labels. You can get ad-free, early access to most of my videos on Patreon on the lowest subscription they allow (£1 $1 €1 plus VAT/tax). There's even a free trial! www.patreon.com/user?u=44805086 Here's my video talking about using Mindisc to store BBC Model B 8-Bit computer so...
My BBC Model B Software on Tape & Disk
Переглядів 329Місяць тому
Here's a video to remind me of what software I have on tape and floppy disk for my BBC Model B Microcomputer from the '80s. #8Bit. #vintage #computersoftware It's to remind me what I have in the future when I'm able to get my Beeb out of storage to use again. Maybe you'll find it interesting too. You can get ad-free, early access to most of my videos on Patreon on the lowest subscription they a...
BBC Model B Software Stash
Переглядів 2142 місяці тому
In this video I go through some of the original software I have for my Beeb, the BBC Model B Computer (8-bit from the 1980s), from legendary software houses such as Acornsoft, Superior Software, Empire, Firebird, Supersoft, Salamander Software. You can get ad-free, early access to most of my videos on Patreon on the lowest subscription they allow (£1 $1 €1 plus VAT/tax). There's even a free tri...
1980s Philips Boombox Repair Part 2
Переглядів 3622 місяці тому
This video has it all; vintage audio tech, electronics repair, PCBs, soldering, cassette belt replacement, faulty cassettes, and even some innuendos. See part 1 here: ua-cam.com/video/bBtwA0tuKsA/v-deo.html You can get ad-free, early access to most of my videos on Patreon on the lowest subscription they allow (£1 $1 €1 plus VAT/tax). There's even a free trial! www.patreon.com/user?u=44805086 Re...
Help! Beeb 16K fault, ToolROM, and odd ADC chip
Переглядів 1072 місяці тому
Can you help with this RAM fault and dodgy-looking ADC chip, please? Related video (not mine): ua-cam.com/video/B0yhhTZXhAE/v-deo.html You can get ad-free, early access to most of my videos on Patreon on the lowest subscription they allow (£1 $1 €1 plus VAT/tax). There's even a free trial! www.patreon.com/user?u=44805086 BBC Model B Retro computing Vintage 8-bit computers
Nice Hi-Fi Feature and Cassette Box Hack
Переглядів 3202 місяці тому
Let's have a look at a useful feature on this JVC Compact Component System MX-S200 and what I think is a related hack of a double album cassette tape box. You can get ad-free, early access to most of my videos on Patreon on the lowest subscription they allow (£1 $1 €1 plus VAT/tax). There's even a free trial! www.patreon.com/user?u=44805086 Related videos ua-cam.com/video/pZPo3iYzxVw/v-deo.html...
TDK Fine Cafe & Ice 5 Colour Mix Minidisc Unboxing BNIB
Переглядів 3332 місяці тому
TDK Fine Cafe & Ice 5 Colour Mix Minidisc Unboxing BNIB
Unboxing Computape Computer Cassettes
Переглядів 3783 місяці тому
Unboxing Computape Computer Cassettes
Used TDK Fine Japanese Exclusive Minidisc
Переглядів 4103 місяці тому
Used TDK Fine Japanese Exclusive Minidisc
More Free Cassettes (Pre-recorded - July 2024 Haul)
Переглядів 4114 місяці тому
More Free Cassettes (Pre-recorded - July 2024 Haul)
Charity Shop New-Old-Stock Cassettes
Переглядів 4215 місяців тому
Charity Shop New-Old-Stock Cassettes
Unusual Music in Cheap Minidisc Haul
Переглядів 8096 місяців тому
Unusual Music in Cheap Minidisc Haul
Unboxing TDK Lucir Japanese Exclusive Minidiscs
Переглядів 2756 місяців тому
Unboxing TDK Lucir Japanese Exclusive Minidiscs
Maxell Couler 5-Pack Minidisc Unboxing
Переглядів 2427 місяців тому
Maxell Couler 5-Pack Minidisc Unboxing
Battery Corrosion Removal - Sony MZ-R900 Portable Minidisc Recorder/Player
Переглядів 9007 місяців тому
Battery Corrosion Removal - Sony MZ-R900 Portable Minidisc Recorder/Player
Sony MZ-R900 Unboxing and Line Out Test
Переглядів 8447 місяців тому
Sony MZ-R900 Unboxing and Line Out Test
Gumstick Batteries. New & Used. Tested & Explained (in layman's terms, sorta)
Переглядів 1,2 тис.7 місяців тому
Gumstick Batteries. New & Used. Tested & Explained (in layman's terms, sorta)
Sony MZ-N505 Minidisc Player/Recorder Button Problem Solved
Переглядів 1,4 тис.7 місяців тому
Sony MZ-N505 Minidisc Player/Recorder Button Problem Solved
Technics Quartz Locked Cassette Deck RS B655
Переглядів 1,3 тис.8 місяців тому
Technics Quartz Locked Cassette Deck RS B655
how to ERASE the MD music and RECORD different Music on it????
At age 13 I fixed an MZ R55 with a small crumb of bread and super glue. It fell by accident in the mechanism and it fixed the problem with the MD couldn't read the disc.
could not find any of those, instead got the N910 and N920 :)
IPA will clean pots but can also leave them feeling scratchy and rough as you will wash out the factory lube along with the stuff causing it to jump. Try a clean and lube product like Deoxit Fader F5 or one of its cheaper competitors. And don’t pull the pot apart. You should be able to get the stuff in there through a hole in the pot. Break a leg!
@@Pamberjack_ Thanks. I've since bought a proper contact cleaner from WD-40. Thanks.
Thanks I learnt a trick or two from you 👌🏻
Some rare gems you have there. Those AXIA MD J'z are fantastic. I have the 'lightbulb' motif, 'apple' motif and 'zig zag' motif but the others are missing to make my collection complete. I really like the Sony Lumina and the Axia Hello Kitty. Great collection.
I think everything Elftone was cheap and a bit crummy. I remember doing a few jobs at Elftone's office in Beresford Av, Wembley in early 90s. They were actually opposite Binatone's office, the other purveyor of cheapo products.
Hello. How much did one cost? I ask because I bought a sealed EAGLE C-15 similar to yours on March 2, 2020 and it cost me 16.63 euros plus shipping at that time. I bought it just for those metal rollers and not for the tape in it, which is a bit crappy. It has bad mechanism also. But I have to admit it looks good. And so do yours.
This is a very good deck. I have a KX-3030, and the recording quality is excellent.
i have a sony wm ex 506 and i have exactly the same problem. when i bought it a month ago the pinch roller for the A side had a groove so the wow and flutter was terrible. i have ordered from aliexpress new pinch rollers, it came in bag with 5 pinch rollers. the wow and flutter improved a lot but still its much too high. the B side plays fine. i hope you can tell me where i can get the correct pinch rollers. the pinch roller of your walkman and mine are the same.
I relaced mine and the relpacements were not good. It was months ago, but I looked around for a good supplier wih the correct sizes but couldn't find one. I bought some from a good supplier but they are a little bigger. I haven't fitted one yet, but if I do, I'm make a video about it.
I'm a bit believer in Right to Repair so am not a fan of the design of this device. That said : 1. You could have returned it for a refund. 2. That's not the right tool to open this device ( I've used this tool for 15yrs) 3. You could have easily been more careful and fixed the device without tearing the battery pads off the board, bending the board and damaging soldered chips etc Heating the device with a hair dryer and using a butter knife would have been far more successful. This device is meant to be basically waterproof, so you should expect it to be well sealed. There's plenty of other competing devices that are rechargeable or use CR 2032 replaceable batteries !
I felt a bit sad when you put the R30 away 😂
More of a chance I got the MZ-G750. It does it job
Power protect push power issue
I have got this cassette player and when I press play button the head does not go up unfortunately and unfortunately I don't know why
@@StereoAmplifierJapanMaybe it can't detect that the cassette has been inserted. See here ua-cam.com/video/Zy-Aotx1BQ0/v-deo.html
@CBitsTech I fixed it and my cassette player is working great now. One of springs near the belt from inside wasn't in the right place and I put it in the right place and everything is good now. Thanks
Excellent. Good job! 👍
Congrats!
I'm from the United States. Minidisc didn't take off here. But the format still fascinates me. This video gave me a window into what you could do with a Minidisc.
Hi! does exist some way to get music in a Minidisk if my walkman is not a NET md? Mine is a SonY MZ-R90
Hey, I was just wondering, what are those "adaptor" inputs and those connected to it "rings" used for? Thanks.
I ONCE WANTED TO BUY A MINIDISC COMPILATION BUT IT SAID IT WOULD NOT HOLD THE MEDIA SO I DECIDED FOR A CD 😅
@@radekkavka6174 Good call 😁
i've just spent ages trying to get a tape to play without being eaten. The old smack trick was the ticket. Many thanks for preserving old knowledge!
Ah, cool. Glad to have helped. Usually a chewed tape is a sticky pinch roller or capstan, but a stuck take-up spool will do that too. I hope it was worth the trouble.
I just got one of these, but even after cleaning the sound is disturbed by a LF AM, you may call it choppy as if the speaker was behind a fan. Next step is to calibrate the azimut, but too reach the screws of the head, it seems to be necessary to remove the cassette lid. Any hints for that? Cheers bro.
I would like to try opaque or translucent labels to allow the colors of the minidiscs come through.
Danke für das Video. Habe meine zahlreichen Minidisc mit Hilfe der Druckersoftware von Sony beschriftet. (Das war mit der seinerzeitigen Windows Version. Ob das jetzt mit Windows 11 noch funktioniert habe ich noch nicht probiert.)
Was Sony’s printer software part of Sonic Stage?
@@naps3386 Ja, SonicStage Software
thank you for this video, i used the toslink methid and everything went amazin, i can now listen to my fav music on my lil MD walkman ^^
@@skullape3281 Great to hear, thanks.
Royal mail are terrible. Cost me £250 this week and lost all mymparcels i sent
Never use WD-40 on anything like this it’s completely the wrong thing !
@@awfmel It was contact cleaner, WD-40 Contact Cleaner. A contact cleaner made by the WD-40 company. It said so on the screen.
@ At one point I saw you spray WD-40 into the mech ! And thanks but I know exactly what WD-40 is and you never as I said spray it into electronic equipment it’s full of paraffins which destroy rubber and plastics ! Ok I see you used WD-40 contact cleaner but spraying it soo randomly is also a bad idea ! You should have taken the unit apart more extensively even if it was not the easiest job in the world it’s the only way to do it properly ! Unfortunately lots of amateurs on utube show things like this and damage equipment without even knowing what they are really doing. I say this as a professional electronics engineer in audio for over 40 years!
@@awfmel I get it, thanks. But taking it apart was more likely to damage something else as I'm not a professional. Fortunately, it's still working fine.
How to remove a tape that is stuck inside a car cassette player? The eject button fails to eject the tape.
Great review on lifting the toner arm
lol
Had this back 1998. My parents bought it for me from good guys.
Coll idea with minidisc....! Have you tried lp4 mono? You can save hours and hours of computer programs this way. On the other hand the same way you can use mp3 and keep it on pc or smartphone.
@@InsideOutElectronics Hi! I suppose LP4 would work. At 5 mins each software, I could get over 70 programs on one MD. The problem would be skipping to the right one on the disc I have 100s of spare minidiscs I think, so I'm not short of blank media 🙂
@CBitsTech hah, then this is not a problem, it rather the curiosity of how far we can push this
Good point. If I had an afternoon free I could download all the software I could find then copy then burn them all on LP4 Mono 😁 I'd need a second disc for game saves 🙂
That spring goes on the plastic leg that operates the “cover closed” switch
Hi. Great video exactly what l need to do. l have a blank lens and head cleaner disc ! Do you know where l can download the tracks to record to the disc as l only have the blank one thanks in advance
@@empty1966 No, sorry, I don't know where to download them. I bet they're not even available for download. You could use either blank tracks of the correct length (record from Line In without an audio source), or record your own instructions, or even find suitable music of the correct length. Just title the tracks as instructions.
Is it a good deck??
Thanks for the interesting overview, concise and well edited. I'm having a retro resurgence lately and have been tinkering with CRTs, old consoles and now music too. I had a Panasonic SJ-MR200 back in the day and used to record sounds on it for use in video projects at university in the early 00s. I've recently acquired an immaculate Sony MZ-N520 and I'm looking forward to making some discs with Web Minidisc Pro and possibly tinkering with some analog or optical too. Thanks again
@@mudstuff Thanks for your kind comments. CRTs scare me (in terms of working on them). Good luck with making discs with Web Minidisc Pro. It's great software, but can be tricky getting the Driver installed on Windows. Thanks again.
@CBitsTech thanks for the reply. I received my 'new' md recorder the other day and was aware of some possible issues getting started on pc. So, I haven't tackled the pc yet as I also have a macbook. I bought a mini usb b to usb-c cable, connected the md to the mac, opened chrome and it just works! 😁
I have a bit of a collection with regards to vintage storage, and I have both 5.25 inch and 3.5 inch MO disks and drives, of a variety of capacities. I have yet to figure out a way to record on magneto optical WORM media with the drives that I have. The technology is really interesting, and I recommend sourcing a drive of each size (5.25 and 3.5) for your vintage use. Fujitsu makes the best 3.5 inch ones, and generally 640MB or 1.3GB are pretty common. A 2.3GB 3.5inch drive will read and write all 3.5 inch disks, down to 128MB. The 5.25 inch drives are a bit different, the higher capacities will not write to lower ones once they go down so far, and won't even read them if they're too low in capacity. I have the Sony 9.1GB drives, which seem to be more abundant and can read/write to disks at least 5GB - 9GB. You can look up the Reddit for MagnetoOpticalDrives at r/MagnetoOpticalDrives/ if you want to know about them.
Hi buddy ive the sj-mr230 with box and speakers...u interested
i have one like these exactly, but idk how to play or do something, i just have it.
If it's wrapped you'll need a Minidisc recorder (a full size, or a portable) to put music onto it. If it's unwrapped then it may have something on it so you'll need a Minidisc player to find out.
Works transmit cassetteplayer to bluetooth speakers?
@@Moontrak Yes, it should do.
I found one of this in a chest in my house what they do?
@@SignoredellecripteLv.6 You can record and play music on them, similar to a recordable CD.
@ cool! And how? Did I need some specific cable or idk?
@@SignoredellecripteLv.6 You need a Minidisc recorder, either a full size deck or a portable. Then watch this video ua-cam.com/video/5JHFIXiOnw8/v-deo.html
I’ve got many minidisc players,I used to collect them as I worked at a recycling centre,But I did buy about 4 players,My 1st purchase in 1996 was a Sony Mzr-30,My favourite and I’ve still got it complete,boxed too,Only gripe is the Lip-12 standard battery was rubbish,But very expensive,I love minidisc,And always will.My second favourite is A mint condition Sony MZR-2,Good solid made machine,It was the ATRAC systems they used over the years that differed,Hope you get your 1K likes.
@@neilrobinson5115 Thanks very much. I think there are some after-market LIP-12 batteries, or better still there might be a 3D printed adapter for another size.
@ I’ve had one aftermarket battery for the MZR-30,I saw on UA-cam a chap cutting round carefully around the LIP-12,Inside was a flat ended 18650 3.7 volt battery,With a micro circuit soldered to each end for charging,I tried to put it back together like he did,But the plastic casing buckled,So I threw it away in the local battery bank,Many of the MD players that came in the recycling centre were perfectly fine,Apart from Verdigris on the battery end that makes contact with the little swing door,A piece of wire wool made it good.I forgot to say I’ve also got a good condition Mz-R3 too,Nice looking player which takes 2 x AA’s,Just a great format that had more classy looks than iPod.
@@neilrobinson5115 Yeah, they still look good today. I think I'm a couple of years time we'll be able to get 3D printed adapters for many more parts, such as battery doors. How many in your collection?
I recently got an SJ-MJ19. It wasn't working well on the gumstick (unit would reboot when even gently moving it around) and it was exactly what you mention, there was corrosion inside the hinge. It took quite a bit of wiggling the door back and forth while keeping it wet with deoxit, but it works great now.
@@ExtendedJet8 Excellent! I'm glad you got it working. Enjoy!
I have a non portable CD player and I am looking for a bluetooth adapter so I can play music using my portable speaker. Do you think this product will work? Thanks
@@LeeLee-sk2wf Yes, if your player has a 3.5mm headphone out socket.
@ Thank you
You have to do a testing stream to see if these games load. Those letter transfers were called Letraset. I used to label tapes with them, especially the Bush ones from Argos that came in completely clear shells, it gave them a more legitimate look.
Cool. I think I still have those Letraset ones somewhere. You mean a live-stream to see if the games load? Would be kinda boring, I think, waiting for 3-5 mins for the load, if it works first time.
@@CBitsTech Novabug does CPC tape testing streams every week. I think it's fun, but then I am weird.
I'll check out his channel. I had hoped to do some cassette game loading this week, but things haven't gone to plan so far. Maybe I will later this week.
I actually prefer the AA bump for holding the unit, and the availability and versatility of using an alkaline AA or rechargeable AA tips the scales even farther to AA.
@@naps3386 They are good for that reason. I have a lot of part-used AAs to use up, but all my AA MDLP players are broken 🙁
I am thinking to buy a sony minidisc player and I wonder how to get some music there... I could found some blank minidiscs around... thank you for this video!
Just bought one of those Maxell xl11 80 pro new old stock sealed to try and it recorded beautifully and deadly silent in my machine..what's difference between pro and non pro discs? Thx..
@@jasbo7288 One's got Pro written on it 😁 Only kidding. I can't tell any difference. Maybe the disc is a different formulation, but it's digital, if it can be read then it's exactly the same data no matter what the formulation. Just marketing, IMO.