Sony's R50 dodges SCMS

All you need is a 24K resistor.

Follow these steps to make a digital copy of a digital copy with your R50:

  1. Connect the TOSLink optical cable to the optical in on the MZ-R50 and the optical out of your digital source.
  2. Slide the REC lever or push PLAY (Display should flash NO COPY if you pressed record and the source is playing)
  3. Momentarily connect a 24K resistor to pins 2 and 4 (counting from left to right on the remote jack). (photo) A 24K resistor can be found at RadioShack for a fraction of a dollar. It can be bent into a U shape and inserted into the remote socket. There is little risk of shorting out the pins, but try to contact only the second and fourth pins. While inserting the resistor, watch the display. A very brief blip in the text area of the display will indicate that you have made the appropriate connection, and can then put the resistor away and continue with the next step.
  4. Slide HOLD switch to hold (yellow dot now visible).
  5. Push |<< or >>| repeatedly to scroll through the parameters tabled below to SCMS ON
  6. Pushing PLAY Toggles SCMS ON to SCMS OFF. At this point, the recorder is still in record pause if you hit RECORD, or is playing if you pressed PLAY in step two.
  7. Now slide the HOLD switch back to the normal position to record without SCMS. SCMS OFF must be on display during this step.

ROM version 1.40 and later:

Permanent Modification:
See this other page about soldering the 24k resistor inside the back cover.  This does away with carrying around and fiddling with the silly resistor.

Notes:


Here's a list of all the parameters visible using the track mark keys (In order):
RAMxxx:yy where xxx is an address, and yy is a value. Pressing Pause repeatedly cycles through the addresses by increments of 16 (second digit in hex), and the volume keys cycle the address by one. Use caution here. 
Ad:xxxxxx Best guess** is this is the address of the current point on disc.
ch:xxxxxx No idea
DRAM: xxx This might represent how full the memory buffer is
ERASE OFF Toggling to ERASE ON, then switching HOLD off will erase the disk.***
sd:xxxxxx This counts as the disc is played; seems to be related to the position of the optical block
TEMP: 26c The temperature inside the unit
Mk01/Md27 ???
SCMS ON Ahh. Push PLAY to toggle, then unslide HOLD switch to undo scms
18cluster Don't know
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*Shaun Turner provided this for me.
** Edward Plese has contributed his ideas to the table above.
***Likewise Tao Cherm Lim

since February 1998


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streeter at sketchy.net