MD Hammer Upgrade

From:       [email protected] (Nilay Patel)
Subject:    minidisc storage
Date:       Mon, 29 Apr 1996 23:29:46 -0500
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
recently while cleaning, i came across a minidisc i got in the mail (i don't own a player) and a hammer at the same time. seizing the wild abandon of the moment, i set the disc on edge and whacked it with the hammer. the two halves of the shell fell apart, and inside lay the coolest little shiny cd-thing i've ever seen. the point-why didn't sony just sell these things and ditch all that extraneous plastic? i urge you to try this at home. you or a friend probably has a minidisc but not a player. just crack the sucker open, and you'll see what should have replaced the floppy, cd, and tape in one full swoop. instead, we have a little plastic jolly rancher-type piece of crap that no one uses because the price of all the plastic drives up the price of the minidisc format. there's enough room on the unused side of the disc to hold relevant information (a disk label, a brand name) and a minidisc holds something like 400mb, i'm told. so here's my idea. all that's really needed to convert a make a million dollars is an adapter that converts regular old mindisc players to accept that little disc. to explain:

just imagine this-you insert a mindisc (shell and all) into a player. when you eject it, the shell pops out and _opens_ exposing the disc inside. the disc has just basic information printed on the unused side, because, as sony's driven in your ear a million times, the minidisc holds track names and whatnot on itself then to play a different minidisc (just the media this time) you pop it into the empty shell (now part of the machine-like a CD tray) and push the assembly back in.

there. i hope someone builds this little adapter.
i would buy one
[email protected]


Another user responds with these comments:

From:       Turbyne GTX
Subject:    minidisc storage
Date:       Wed, 21 Mar 2001 12:29:28 -500
Around the same time that MDs came out, CDs were using that little adapter. Remember the NEC drives w/ the strange cylindrical door? Those required that little adapter. Back then, a CD-ROM was useless without that hunky, chunky cartridge. Eventually, for whatever reason, they became obsolete. However, to transport CDs, we now must use wallets and other protective devices.

If mindisc didn't have the case, we'd be carrying around mini-jewel cases until the cows came home. One of the great benefits of MD is that it's tough, and without the case, the cute little disc could not be that.


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