
Dumping MiniDisc Media - ingve
https://www.pagetable.com/?p=1384
======
cbmuser
Edit: I have finally created a separate organization for the project now:
[https://github.com/linux-minidisc/linux-minidisc](https://github.com/linux-
minidisc/linux-minidisc)

Original project creator and co-author of the linux-minidisc project here.

Awesome to see my project on the frontpage of HN, maybe I can use this
opportunity to find new contributors to move the project forward as it has
been a little dormant due to lack of time.

The upstream repository is currently located on my Github page [1], but I
would like to create a separate Github project so that others can easily
become maintainers and help review PRs and so on. There are a couple of
patches in forked projects which improve the NetMD functionality of "libnetmd"
in many ways. However, I would like to create a separate project first before
I want to merge any new patches.

For creating a new project, I was thinking for changing the name as the
original name "linux-minidisc" is rather misleading as the software isn't
Linux-only. It works on any operating system with libusb support and is known
to work on Windows and macOS.

Furthermore, I think the GUI transfer application - QHiMDTransfer - needs an
overhaul. Luckily, the NetMD and HiMD functionality are in separate libraries,
libnetmd and libhimd, so it should even be possible to create a new, more
professional GUI application or even write plugins to existing music players
like Amarok.

The Python code mentioned in this article are actually no longer in
development as it was supposed to be a proof-of-concept only. We used a Google
Summer of Projects slot from the VideoLAN project to have a student work on
implemeting the full NetMD functionality in the libnetmd which was forked from
the original libnetmd.

If anyone is interested in helping project wit the aforementioned tasks and/or
joining us, please let me know. This project is the only known software which
is actually able to decrypt most of the tracks on NetMD and HiMD (not all
though [2]).

> [1] [https://github.com/glaubitz/linux-
> minidisc](https://github.com/glaubitz/linux-minidisc)

> [2] [https://wiki.physik.fu-berlin.de/linux-
> minidisc/doku.php#sta...](https://wiki.physik.fu-berlin.de/linux-
> minidisc/doku.php#status)

~~~
brnt
Not sure how much the projects diverged, but I forked a fork of a fork, about
60 commits apart it seems. In any case, this fork worked for me, not your
original one. I since sold the MD hardware, but in case you have some time,
you could perhaps pull some stuff back in from [1] or any fork closer to you.
I remember speaking at least to one of the other forkers saying upstream was
unresponsive at the time (I guess that may have been you ;)). IIRC, this all
branches out before the Python stuff was added. I used cmdline only, but with
great pleasure.

[1] [https://github.com/brenthuisman/linux-
minidisc](https://github.com/brenthuisman/linux-minidisc)

~~~
cbmuser
Thanks. I'm already in contact with the owner of the fork with most of the
fixes to figure out how we can merge all these changes into the upstream
project. He has promised me to open PRs to get the changes merged upstream.

I'm happy to add new members to the Github organization.

------
satysin
This brings back some great memories from 2002. My daughter had just been born
and when I was up doing the night feeds I used my PlayStation 2 with its
optical out to transfer my CDs onto my MiniDisc player. It was a slow process
(real time) but it was so great to have all the track details automatically
included rather than having to manually name the tracks on the player.

This was before Sony's NetMD software and I couldn't afford a HiFi MiniDisc
unit at the time which would have made life simpler. Also many, many hours
playing Final Fantasy X on the same PS2. Great times!

I soon moved onto an iRiver CD-MP3 player which was much easier to work with
thanks to being able to burn my own CDs. Audio quality wasn't as good as the
MiniDisc but considering I was listening to it in an office with ear buds that
wasn't a big deal. Then onto an iRiver HDD based MP3 player and finally I got
an iPod.

There is still something so _cool_ about MiniDisc though. Feels so CyberPunk,
even today it is like living in the near future when you hold one in your
hands.

~~~
Twirrim
I had a few mini-disc players in the late 90s. I had about an hour commute in
to work in those days and it was awesome not to lug around tapes or the shock
sensitive, constantly skipping, CD Walkman.

I managed to find a fairly cheap "all-in-one" hifi that had a minidisc drive
in it too, so transferring was easy, but lacked the track naming, and it would
only transfer at 1.5x speed.

Those minidisc players took a bit of a beating. In the end I replaced it with
a Creative Nomad Jukebox ([http://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-
flashback-creat...](http://www.iretron.com/blog/posts/technology-flashback-
creative-nomad-jukebox-2000/nomadjukebox/)). That was a revelation. 6GB of MP3
storage meant I could rip all of my CDs and take them with me.

Sony seems to have a habit of producing some really great technology and then
woefully mismanaging it by having short term thinking and failing to learn
from rivals.

It had so many advantages at the time, but the equipment involved in recording
to it was so expensive it was hard to get the labels on-board. If Sony had
been willing to drastically subsidise the recording equipment and got the
labels on board they'd have had so much more chance to make it in the market.
When you're leaving it for your target consumer to wrestle with "How do I get
my music on to it", and requiring specialty hardware purchase or complicated
hacks, you've sort of lost the market already.

~~~
cat199
> the equipment involved in recording to it was so expensive it was hard to
> get the labels on-board.

Source or speculation?

If b, then, to add:

I don't think for a major (or even medium/minor) label this was the issue - at
the time the labels had a real concern about mass high quality digital copying
by consumers destroying their business

~~~
paulmd
this is specifically the reason minidisc is built around a lossy compression
codec so there would be at least some generational loss from copying.

Sony themselves were/are a label and this led to deliberate worsening of their
electronics at times.

~~~
philsnow
Were disc->disc transfers not digital? I would expect to not have to
decode/encode (and thus suffer loss, if the encoder weren't deterministic) if
you're transferring disc to disc.

~~~
devilbunny
There were workarounds like TOC cloning to keep the transfers digital (by
making the device think it was playing something from an analog source, not a
digital one, so it would allow a digital copy over SCMS), but those were not
possible on all devices. And even the digital transfers were over SPDIF, not
direct data transfer (so it depended on the quality of your encoder chip).

There was one way around this: the MDS-W1
([http://minidisc.org/part_Sony_MDS-W1.html](http://minidisc.org/part_Sony_MDS-W1.html))
could move tracks in raw data format between discs. Of course, it erased the
source track, but if you did this twice (it defragmented as it went) and then
TOC-cloned, you could have two identical MD's. They're available on eBay, but
they're $400-500 and ship from Japan, so good luck powering one if you're in
Europe.

It really was a lovely format that was crippled by the music side of the
company. 170 MB on a rugged, infinitely-rewritable, non-accidentally-erasable
format that was smaller than a 3.5" floppy?

------
cybercase
MiniDisc lover here. Great tutorial!

For those of you who're still using MiniDiscs daily, I've just released a
SonicStage replacement app that works in the browser thanks to WebUSB and
WASM.

Here's the link to the project:
[https://github.com/cybercase/webminidisc](https://github.com/cybercase/webminidisc)

and here's a short demo of how it works:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frs8qhw0g9Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frs8qhw0g9Y)

Hope you like it!

~~~
paines
LOVE IT! Thanks a bunch mate. Works like a charm. Used:
[https://stefano.brilli.me/webminidisc/](https://stefano.brilli.me/webminidisc/)
Cannot compile it, cause npm is fucked and and my nodejs fu is meh....

~~~
paines
I just downloaded a whole album, 1h:09m long via Youtube-Notube->m4a. Uploaded
the m4a via
[https://stefano.brilli.me/webminidisc/](https://stefano.brilli.me/webminidisc/).
Works perfectly... Thanks again

~~~
cybercase
Happy everything worked well for you.

Actually, building this app was a lot of fun :)

~~~
cbmuser
Out of curiosity. Did you use code from the linux-minidisc project? Would be
great to see if our code was used in such innovative ways.

~~~
cybercase
Of course I've used it!

And I've created a small npm package that contains all the code that I've
ported from the linux-minidisc project to JS.

[https://github.com/cybercase/netmd-js](https://github.com/cybercase/netmd-js)

Actually, not sure if you're the right person to ask, but how did you manage
to reverse engineer the "uploading" part of the protocol?

I mean... I'm not new to reverse engineering of communication protocols. I've
done that in the past, and I've always relied on some "trick", like
disassembling binaries, flip a debug flag, and assemble them back into a new
binary that printed logs that the original dev left there.

Did you use something similar? Of did you manage to put your hands on some
part of the source code of Simple Burner/Sonic Stage?

by the way. I wouldn't be able to write my app without your hard work. so
thanks!

------
dasKrokodil
Nice tutorial. I loved MiniDiscs back in the day, they were so futuristic. I
had a portable Aiwa MiniDisc recorder long before I could burn CDs. I used it
for everything - copying CDs, recording live music, field recordings. Some
day, I'll have to rescue all that old stuff, so this tutorial is greatly
appreciated.

~~~
krsdcbl
I remember using them over CDs purely because they had that ghost-in-the-shell
anime-scifi feel, although burning a CD was much less pain than converting &
writing to my Sony MD player

~~~
dijit
SAME!

Added bonus that it's what Neo uses in the first matrix movie to give some
software to the guy who knocks his door in the opening scene.

I always wanted to use minidisks as a data medium, but it seems like it was
never really possible.

For the sake of suspending disbelief at the film I like to imagine that Neo
encoded the data into the audio channels, but that would be super slow to
load.

~~~
wazoox
There was MD-Data. 128 MB per disk IIRC.

~~~
darkr
Yep - this was a somewhat common format for pro-audio hardware in the early
2000s.

~~~
dasKrokodil
I think there were even 4- and 8-track MD recorders IIRC.

------
tudorw
The original Sony minidisc separate had unprotected spdif out which might be
an alternative for some, I also looked at getting a minidisc data drive but
they are hard to find.

------
brnt
I myself used this [1] project with a NetMD recorder to move music on or off a
disc.

[1] [https://github.com/brenthuisman/linux-
minidisc](https://github.com/brenthuisman/linux-minidisc)

------
lvs
God, the minidisc players were such beautiful devices. Way ahead of their
time. It's too bad Sony didn't bring them to the US market in full force. I
remember buying one online in Yen and having it shipped from Japan. It was my
first international transaction as a kid.

------
0x0
It feels like the project uses "download" and "upload" the wrong way.

Surely transferring files from the disc drive to the pc using a piece of
software on the pc should be considered "downloading"?

~~~
unixhero
So.. in this way:

The Minidisc Player is the world. As such you download content or data from
the real world down to it, and you upload data up to the real world from it.

~~~
0x0
But, the software that performs the transfer runs on the PC, and it is the one
receiving data. Even Wikipedia defines "downloading" as "receiving data"...

~~~
jonhohle
They are commands sent to the MD to perform. Imagine the NetMD protocol was
something like SSH with `[command]` specified.

------
jccalhoun
Minidisc hardware was great. I bought a Hi-MD recorder when they were
introduced to record some interviews and was really impressed by the hardware.

The software was terrible as were the restrictions placed on it. All the copy
restrictions and forcing ATRAC on people long after it was clear that MP3 was
superior really killed the format.

------
krsdcbl
Oh wow, i am suddenly struck by horrible flashbacks of the hours spent
transfering files with Sonic Stage in my teens, and how it would bring my old
pc to it's knees purely by running idle :D

Thanks for that little nostalgia trip, i think i need to go dig out my md
player now.

~~~
sitzkrieg
simply seeing the program icon gave me that same flashback. i remember saving
up for a minidisc player too at my first job making minimum wage and finally
getting it, my first big purchase as a teen

------
tmjwid
Still use my Minidisc almost daily. I prefer older equipment, but boy they're
both getting expensive to get discs and tapes. Check out platinum md for a
sonicstage replacement

------
zrav
I recently transferred my collection of MD recordings, but not using NetMD,
getting a MD Deck with SPIDF output off ebay for cheap, and feeding the
digital signal to a Focusrite Scarlett audio interface. This seems to ignore
any copy protection bits. Resold deck for same price afterwards.

------
bashyal
I still have a bunch of MiniDiscs but my player stopped working. Can anybody
recommend a place to buy a new one ? I've looked at some of the usual places
but haven't found any.

------
bredren
I had a very nice minidisc player / recorder I imported from japan around
2001. It cost a fortune. I think I still have it and the minidiscs somewhere
but not a clue where.

------
Solar19
Nice. I love Mini Discs, and especially Mini DVDs. They're great for archival
storage. I would just keep them, not migrate to something else.

~~~
EvanAnderson
Stability of the physical media aside, keeping anything you intend to ever
read again on an obsolete storage format makes no sense when you consider that
the number of working readers/players in the world decreases with time. The
only reason I have my Apple II-era data is because I keep kicking it onto
newer storage formats.

------
vr46
WOW. This is sweet. I have an RH1, and a ton of Discs. Off I go!

