Greetings and welcome to LGR Oddware!
Where we're taking a look at hardware and software that is odd, forgotten, and obsolete.
And today's is this little guy right here.
This is the Sony MDH-10 and this is a MiniDisc storage device
for PCs and computers of the early to mid 90s.
And it uses MiniDiscs, but perhaps not the format that you're familiar with exactly if
you know the MiniDisc audio format.
No, this is MD Data and it is a separate thing.
Let's go ahead and take a look at this!
So today's thing is the Sony MDH-10 portable MD Data drive launched in 1995 at a price
of $769.95 in the US.
And this is a computer storage device that writes to Sony MiniDiscs, or more specifically
these MD Data discs, a variant that was specifically created for devices like the MDH-10.
And while they are Sony MiniDiscs and very much resemble the MiniDisc audio discs that
you might be more familiar with like this, they are separate formats.
Not entirely compatible with each other and we'll get into that in a moment.
Let's get back to the MD Data format here
and this first generation of them which we'll be looking at today.
And in these early days you could store 140 megabytes on a single disc, each of which
sold for $30 with a claimed lifespan of more than a million rewrites with no loss in integrity.
And this device uses rewritable MD Data discs but Sony also developed read-only MD Data
discs, more in line with CD-ROMs.
And these were designed for retail software distribution.
And then they also put together an unusual hybrid disc with both read-only and read/write
sections on the same disc.
The idea was to provide an MD Data format suitable for gaming, allowing for saving of
high scores and save games alongside the read-only data portion of the game itself.
Also, as I briefly mentioned earlier, there's an important
distinction between MD Data and MiniDiscs themselves.
So a MiniDisc audio player won't know what to do with an MD Data disc, but an MD Data
disc drive like this one can indeed play MD audio discs.
However, an MD Data player cannot write to MD audio discs, resulting in an oddly limited
realm of possibilities for devices like the MDH-10.
It turns out computer storage was kind of always on Sony's mind when it came to MiniDisc
and they announced the MD Data format in 1993, about a year after the original MiniDisc.
With the MDH-10 being the first device to take advantage of their new medium.
Apparently the intention was to replace their 1.44 megabyte three and a half inch floppy
disk format, which Sony also invented by the way.
But after numerous delays, a hefty price tag on the drives themselves, and several competitive
reasonably-priced alternatives like the Iomega ZIP drive coming around, MD Data never really
stood much of a chance.
Especially in the US where volume shipments didn't even happen until around August of 1995.
Add to that more expensive discs costing $30 for 140 megs compared to $20 for 100 meg ZIP
disks, and the format was pretty much dead on arrival.
However, as many tech things do it had longer legs in Japan, with MD Data finding more of
a foothold with in portable paperless office products like this Sony PDF-W77 Data Eata.
I love that name.
This is a fascinating machine with a backlit 480x640 resolution LCD screen
and an integrated MD Data drive.
As well as the ability to scan, edit, and store documents on the MD Data discs.
But of course it wasn't cheap, costing nearly $2,000 US dollars in 1999.
Apparently it found a foothold in the Japanese business market somewhere in between notebook
computers and PDAs for a few years at least.
And MD Data made its way into a handful of multitrack recording decks, digital imaging
capture devices, and digital still cameras using what they called Picture MD Data discs.
The format received a notable update in 1997 with MD Data2, offering a 650 megabyte capacity
on par with full sized recordable CDs.
But this was barely a blip on the radar, only appearing in a couple devices in the late
90s like the DCM-M1 camcorder, before being dropped like a bad habit and the format's
data storage functionality mantle being picked up by the Hi-MD format in 2004.
But that's the end of the format's story, let's go back to the beginning with the MDH-10 here.
And the device itself is pretty compact, a classic kind of Sony design.
It's a bit smaller than a ZIP drive, so that was a point in its favor.
It's also quite lightweight weighing just 12 ounces or 340 grams.
Of course it would weigh just a little bit more if you installed batteries, and yes unless
you plugged it into the wall it will need battery power.
Sony had these -- well not this one exactly this is a rebuilt one -- these LIP-12 rechargeable
lithium ion batteries.
And that would just go into the little unit right there.
But if you didn't want to rely on the rechargeable ones, or maybe those have gone bad, Sony also
had one of these units right here.
The Sony Battery Case.
And the way this works is you have this little plug right there that clicks into place right
where the external power supply would go.
And then on the bottom there’s a little wheel here and that just screws down.
And there you go.
Attachable battery solution that lets you use double-a batteries, it takes three of them right there.
It does make it a bit bulkier but it's a nice option to have if those lithium-ion batteries
no longer holding a charge and you don't have an external power supply, like me!
But yeah let's go ahead and take a look at the externals of the MDH-10 itself real quick
before we plug it into our Windows 98 PC and see what it can do.
So yeah.
We have on the back here the SCSI interface, a 50 pin connection for plugging into your
standard SCSI-2 interfaces.
And then we also have these four switches, the first one being to terminate the drive
and then the other to determine the SCSI ID.
On the left side we have the bay for the lithium ion battery, a switch for the power -- and
this powers on into audio playback mode for MiniDisc audio discs.
And then data mode for doing all the data stuff,
that's what we're mostly gonna be using in this video.
AVLS switch here for the automatic volume limiting system.
You know, on or off depending on your preferences for MiniDisc audio.
And then we have a line out again for the audio so yeah, if you want to use this just
like a portable MiniDisc player for audio, ya can.
Speaking of which you have a remote control port here, I'll show that in a moment.
It's also where you got your headphone out.
And then right here that opens up the MiniDisc drive itself.
And of course it just goes in there with a nice satisfying sound.
[ka-chunk!]
And for the curious, I do have the remote control unit that goes along with this.
It's a pretty standard thing right there, that just plugs into the interface and it
also gives you headphone output.
And yeah, you kinda need this if you want to use it as just a MiniDisc audio player
because otherwise you can't control things like volume, play, stop, fast-forward, reverse,
and all that kind of stuff.
There's a hold button there, play mode, and then this right here is just a passthrough
for these really crappy headphones that it came with.
Guess the fuzzy earpieces came off of mine at some point before I got it.
This is not just a standard three-and-a-half millimeter connection that plugs into the end of this.
So if you don't have those exact headphones it does seem to be a bit of a problem.
But you know, there's a three and a half mil connection for standard headphones right there.
But anyway!
This does require some software that is specific to the device.
The only disc that mine came with is this installation software for Macintosh.
I'm not gonna be using this on a Macintosh because I don't have one set up at the moment
with SCSI, so I actually downloaded some Windows drivers for Windows 9x.
So we're gonna try that.
Really all we need to do is just plug in a SCSI cable right here.
That's that.
But yeah, this is the “desk-top” PC setup that we'll be using there.
I like the dash in between the words “desk” and “top” by the way.
I don't know, that's charming.
And lastly the other side of the cable just plugs into the SCSI port on my
Lazy Green Giant Windows 98 PC here.
I already have this Adaptec SCSI controller ready to go so let's get the software installed
and write some data on MiniDiscs!
Okay, everything's plugged in, it is on data mode, so let's see if it recognizes.
And yes, it does. SCSI ID 1.
And we'll just go ahead and get a disc inserted here.
[opening MD Data drive, shuffling disc]
[sha-klunk]
[Windows 98 startup sounds plays]
So just to check here and see that it is detected
under disk drives and it is!
So that is right there.
However we're going to install the driver for it that I found online for Windows 9x.
“Welcome to MD Data world!” [chuckles]
Aw do I have to write it to a floppy disk?
I do. That's fun.
[disk drive noises]
Yeah, that's more like it!
Software installed, computer restarted.
And if we just attempt to open it through Explorer like this we're gonna get this
“not accessible device is not ready.”
And actually if we even try to format it through Windows it's not gonna let us do that either.
It cannot format this drive because “the device driver for the disk does not support
formatting” or blah-de-dah-de-dah.
So we actually have to use that MD Data utility that it came with.
This actually does not use FAT32 or any kind of typical file system, it actually has its
own MD Data file system, so that you can switch between computer systems at will.
So MD Data discs that you write on a PC through Windows will still be readable in DOS or on
a Macintosh or a PC-98, whatever system you happen to have.
There we go, format completed.
“Zero bytes defect on disk.”
Well, presumably.
I didn't do a full format since that can take 35 minutes, this quick one just takes a couple.
And at this point we should just be able to open it up in Explorer and there we go!
We have a disk drive with approximately 140 megabytes, so around a hundred and thirty-five
free at the moment. So that's cool.
And if we wanted to we can, well, run a disk checker.
I mean we don't need to, but... there you go, “All OK.”
We can just copy over canyon.mid for instance.
And then paste that there. And there we go.
It will write and read like any other file really.
Or if we want to say, copy over Commander Keen Dreams, we can do that.
And yeah it will take a little bit, even for smaller transfers like that.
Because just looking at the manual it actually says the transfer speed
is up to 150 kilobytes per second.
Which, while being a little over twice the speed of say a 3.5” inch floppy disk drive,
that's about on par with a parallel port Iomega ZIP drive.
However as you can see here, I think there is actually a problem of some kind with my
particular drive, at least for writing data.
It takes Way longer than it actually should to copy absolutely anything.
Like this is less than a megabyte for this and it's still going, like I don't know why exactly.
I've also had problems with it even being able to read back, like retrieving files that
I've stored onto these MD Data discs.
And I've tried multiple ones and they all sort of crap out.
The SCSI connection is perfectly fine, everything's configured correctly,
I've got drivers and everything.
But yeah, if I try to load anything directly off of one of these discs, it just won't work.
Yeah, “is not a valid Win32 application.”
That's a problem.
Yeah it's always finding errors anytime I format it and then add something to the disc
it will just mess up!
And at this point I've got a disc that is unreadable, so.
And just to try to verify that it wasn't Windows 98 or something
I've booted another setup with Windows 95.
And I have some Windows 95 drivers here, so let's just see if this works.
And it's not even detecting it, heh!
Well I'm just gonna call it here and say the drive has some problems.
Back to Windows 98, we can still do a couple other things there.
I can at least show you what it does with audio MiniDiscs.
So for instance, I have a retail release here: Meat Loaf's “Bat Out of Hell.” [opening
case, inserting disc] And even in data mode we can just go to this MD Audio Player application
and there we go.
So you've got the track listing for the tracks.
However, copyrighted music and YouTube don't really match.
So I'm not gonna play you that but...
And yes, you can also play recordable MDs.
[gratuitous disc insertion sounds]
Hehe, and check out this fantastic early/mid-2000s soundtrack
that somebody put together.
I do not have a recordable MiniDisc player or I would have put some non-copyrighted stuff
to play back for you on here, sorry about that.
So again, I can't really play this stuff either but, you know if you wanted to -- well lemme
me just play DMX here and I'm gonna cover it up with some non-copyrighted stuff.
You can just pretend.
[“DMX” plays, apparently from his synthpop years...]
Yeah, don't you love that “DMX?”
Oh and in case you're wondering what happens if you try to open an audio, just normal MiniDisc
in there it's just gonna be like, “nope.”
It can't do anything about that, the only way you can do that is if you were to run
that MiniDisc Audio Player application.
Otherwise it's just meant for reading data, whenever it worked anyway.
So you know, that's that's about it for the MD Data drive, the MDH-10.
So where does all this leave us in terms of the Sony MDH-10
and MD Data as a storage medium of the mid-90s?
Well personally, I dig the idea.
I like the look and the feel of it and just the -- you know, the mechanism and the sound
and all that kind of stuff.
It's just satisfying.
At the same time I can also really begin to see why it didn't make huge waves in the world
of mid 90s storage tech for personal computers.
For one thing its competitors like the Iomega ZIP disk were just a lot less expensive.
You know, this is almost three times as much for the drive itself.
And of course the discs were a little more for -- granted they had 40% more capacity
than the 100 meg ZIP disks of the time.
But still you're not getting a whole lot more with this.
And then of course there's also the reliability issue, at least in my experience.
It's not -- it’s got some problems.
But maybe again that's just maybe my unit.
Whatever the case may be though I hope that you enjoyed
taking a look at this obsolete storage format.
And if you’d care for some more LGR Oddware, I do this kind of thing as often as I can!
And there are new videos of all sorts every single week right here on LGR.
So if you enjoyed this kind of thing, then perhaps you'd like to see any number of the
other stuff that I do.
I always try to keep it interesting at least.
And as always, thank you very much for watching!