Pros: Highly upgradeable/hackable
Long battery life
Excelent sound quality (on LP2 mode)
Shiny and pretty
Cons: Battery "bulge"
Made by Sony
Realtime recording
A lot of stuff not built in
The Bottom Line: Buy it if you hack hardware and if you don't just do the service mode upgrade. Adds a lot of very useful functions which makes buying it worthwhile.
five-seven's Full Review: Sony Walkman MZ-R500 PC Personal MiniDisc Player
Hi all. Before I start rambling, I will say this review is to state the standard and hackable features the MZ-R500 has to offer. First off, I want to let you all know that i hate sony... They incorperate the latest and greatest techonlogies (which I think is ****ing awesome) the way their electronics are constructed and organized is not simple. Sony electronics are some of the hardest electronics to repair.
Ok well here's actually what I'm supposed to be talking about:
I am a 16 year old male.
Before my R500 MD, I was using my Palm Tungsten T for portable music because it could playback oggvorbis files [2x better than mp3's and just as good as the new ATRAC for the 1gig MDs].
But then while working on my friends computer only a little while ago, she finds her old MD which happened to be broken. Since she already has her new MD (MZ-NF610) she gives me her old one (the MZ-R500). A while back I remembered that while crusing through minidisc.org, I happened to come across "hack" In some of the descriptions. While returning to minidisc.org, I began alittle research on my newly acquired MD. I found that by changing a few values in the EEPROM through service mode, you can enable a whole mess of useful features.
Visit the link here:
http://www.minidisc.org/mzr700_to_mzr900.html
If you're good with electronics (as the title implies) you can also view the service manual (awesome!!!) and so you can learn the inner workings of it down the the smallest detail (if you wanted too)
Upon scanning through the service manual you can add several functions with a relatively small amount of parts:
You can easily add a remote if you had a connector 4 small copper plates/connectors/whatevers you can see if you open up the battery cover and look in the lower right hand corner are standard Sony MD or anything remote connections, all active with a stock MD-R500.
All of these hacks are referenced from the MZ-R700 Service manual which has an incredibly similar circuitry and can be found at:
http://www.minidisc.org/manuals/sony/service/sony_MZ-R700G750_service_manual.pdf
Enabling "Beep". Beep is where while paused or messing with menus or other stuff such as the M-Timer function, it will make noise. The most useful of those is the M-Timer. If you're listening to music, you can set an adjustable timer which will let you know when it's up by either stopping the music, or if you've hacked the beep function, you can hear a MIDI melody (3 choices). The Beep function requres the breaking of a trace and the soldering of 3 traces.
Adding Digital output and LED status lights are also an possible hack if you wanted too...
Much harder projects include adding a small charging circuit to the power IC, or adding a Microphone amp.
If you want more information about hacking the MZ-R500's functions, you can contact me through AIM (www.aim.com) through my Screen Name:
FunboyHI
Portable mini-disc player with recording capability Digital gain control ensures quality recording Automatic Volume Limiter System for even, consisten...More at Amazon Marketplace
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