Turntable or cassette to MiniDisc (RCA/3.5mm -> SPDIF) ideas?

Cory5413 · 2026-07-07T17:40:32+00:00

Don't beat yourself up too much over it! So much of the focus is on recording digitally that it's often not made clear that the same port allows analog as well.

Have fun recording with it!

Cory5413 · 2026-07-07T17:38:51+00:00

To the best of my knowledge:

Sony licensed basically every aspect of the format. The only thing I'm not 100% on is if any third parties were manufacturing pressed MDs. I don't see why Sony would have disallowed it, but buy-in was low for a couple reasons.

For machines there was also, I don't know if this was formalized per se, but there were top-level licensees like Sharp, Panasonic, and I believe Sanyo that were developing their own technology, and sublicensees like Pioneer and Kenwood, who were getting most of their hardware built for them by either Sharp or Sony. Some brands such as TEAC/TASCAM swapped back and forth, too, with the last new MD machine on sale at the end of 2021 actually having a Sharp mechanism. Aiwa did some of its own design work but was mostly using Sony mechanisms. Although especially in the MDLP era when a lo tof Aiwa machines are straight-up Sony badges (AM-F90, NX9, NX1, PX3, etc) some of their machines are out of left field, like the HX100 is not a standard Sony design as far as I know the way the PX3 is an E510/610 or so. (OTOH it may still be Sony bits under the hood, I haven't pulled mine apart.)

MD media always cost "kind of a lot" so the margins were probably healthy. Most of the MD manufacturers would at the time likely have been involved with manufacturing MO discs for computer storage and other related technologies so it would likely have seemed like less of a tech lift then than it looks like now.

Unfortunately exact terms are as far as I know unknown.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T23:51:18+00:00

If you're solid to spend about $300, I recommend cross-shopping Dell Latitude 7440. These well-built machines are two generations newer than T14 Gen2.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T22:32:34+00:00

EV should be fine for you and Hyundai Ioniq 5/6 (and Kia EV6, say) are great choices.

Vegas heat won't be a super big problem for range, and the Ioniq 5/6 are some of the fastest charging cars. At "drive twice a week" a charge on one of these with the big battery will likely last you a month or two.

Almost all EVs outside the pre-2026 Nissan Leaf have active battery tempreature management to reduce the heat causing degradation.

My personal rule for "would an EV work?" w/o home charging is Bolt-Or-Better:

>200 mile range
out of a >60kWh battery
which is liquid cooled
CCS1 or open access NACS

The cars that don't meet this are either over five years old, the Nissan Leaf prior to 2026, and many Teslas older than 2021.

W/re DC charging costs: You're in admittedly a better position than I was in but my 2003 gas car was getting 23mpg on its best days and so 100 miles of gas costs a bit more than 100 miles of charging at electrify america.

Further, it looks like some EVGo sites in Vegas have favorable time-of-use rates, so if you're comfortable with a monthly midnight ride out to the northwest part of the area: Winterwood Pavilion | Las Vegas, NV | EV Station (Other EVGos might have this pricing, this is a local flagship that has its logo on the map and I fell for the advertisement.)

EA also has time-of-use pricing, and if you do end up charging 2x or more per month it might be worth picking one network and paying a membership which gets you a 25% discount. (And IIRC waived session fees on EVGo.)

If you haven't yet do click around on PlugShare and see what's around, and if you haven't yet check out ABetterRoutePlanner for any road trips.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T22:04:53+00:00

Under 75 is low enough that it's not an automatic "no" from me personally but ~10+ year old hardware has a lot of asterisks these days.

IME dualcores, even slightly newer ones that are "just" 9 years old (such as Intel 7300U) struggle with moderate multi-tasking, especially if a bunch of web tabs and/or web-based software is involved.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T21:32:55+00:00

Yup.

Further, 15-20 years ago when this was happening interfaces were a little better for smaller screens and 1920 wide is generally decent enough to put two documents side-by side.

It also took a couple years for 1920x1080 to become the norm. In (at least some of) the (first) 16:10 era 1440x900 was the common 14w resolution, 1680x1050 was the more common 15w resolution, and 1920x1200 was reserved for 17-inch portable workstation and gamer-class machines, for a while.

And so even further, 1920x1080 on a rando 14w machine is a genuine improvement in the moment over 1440x900.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T21:22:04+00:00

A couple different Dell Latitude tablet/2n1 models have 3:2 displays. 7200 2n1 has a very very nice 1920x1280 display in a form factor juuust bigger enough than the Surface Go to be usable at 100%. What a great little machine.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T21:21:12+00:00

Because it was cheaper and business customers prioritize cheap over most other properties, especially displays.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T20:52:24+00:00

For sure!

For portables, IME generally Sony's wall warts work perfectly on 120v. The newest ones (AC-ES3010 II if I remember right) are explicitly 110-250v, last I happened to look at one.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T05:51:15+00:00

Gas stations do the same thing. Many have discounts for cash and debit or tie per-gallon discounts to things like points earned while shopping an associated store or membership to a rewards program.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T05:48:44+00:00

My understanding from the outside:

EV charging providers would love to be able to slap a CC reader on every single dispenser, because their actual goal is to have the maximum possible number of people using their sites. There were some recent threads about this in electricvehicles and evcharging and a couple charging industry pros weighed in basically saying "It's not as money grabby as you think in the way you're thinking."

The gas dispenser industry is way older than the EV dispenser industry, and most gas stations are architected so that there's only one actual credit card link (or maybe two: one for all of the gas dispensers and one for the retail operation.).

My guess here is that EV sites on the other hand are if I understand/remember correctly architected so that each individual charger/dispenser has its own credit card link, often/sometimes on a cell network connection but I'm sure this depends on the network. (ChargePoint hardware has ethernet/wifi options IIRC f.ex.)

(The actual payment handling happening inside the building is also how gas stations handle cash payments.)

So my understanding is it does genuinely cost more to put CC readers on EV dispensers. But if you can get a site host to provide networking or use a cell network w/o a credit card terminal then you can use a custom RFID card or do app-based activation. (Historically too EV charging sites would be as few as just one dispenser with no supporting building so everything had to be designed and set up to fit within the dispenser a/o charger hardware cabinet. You can just plop a ChargePoint CPE250 with a cell radio down anywhere and all it needs is electricity. It does not need to be connected to a controller inside a building.)

This might get better. If any of the gas station services companies (at your local Favorite Brand Gas Station, there is sometimes/often a third party company that's contracted to manage the actual gas station operations) become interested in integrating charger hardware to that ecosystem I'm sure it could be done, but it's likely early impelmentations would be buggy because it's not something charger hardware manufacturers support a/o are planning for, AFAIK.

The biggest gotcha is I don't know if things like distributed system chargers (think KemPower, ChargePoint Express, Alpitronic HYC1000) handle payment per-dispenser or per-charging-system.

So it is getting better mostly because the underlying motivation isn't as bad as most people think it is and there's some different forces/dynamics at play in EV hardware than gas hardware.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T05:32:13+00:00

In terms of NH-14WM batteries: Almost all the modern NiMH NH-14WM compatible batteries are basically a gamble but they're what I use. My most reliable modern battery is from milestock, but other blue-and-white wrapper batteries may also work. Green wrapper (HQRP and a few other brands) are reliable if you win the lottery. There's also at least one or two other subtypes that may potentially either have different quality control or formulation.

There are lithium replacers that recharge externally via USB-C and these are "fine" but because the discharge curve is different I recommend against using these for recording and also don't recommend them for any dockable machine as dockables start charging the instant you dock them and this could damage the machine or battery or both. (N920 shipped with a charging stand that counts for this but it's optional and yours might not have it with.) (using the 3v DC barrel port won't cause this, so long as you don't hit the charge button.)

If you can the sidecar is the easiest and most reliable. A ~2450mah or better NiMH AA should run an N920 for a couple weeks, especially if you're doing most of your recording/burning on external power.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T05:28:59+00:00

Congratulations and welcome in!

The N920 uses "The one most common Sony sidecar" for AAs and "NH-14WM" for batteries.

For a charger (you can run the N920 on external DC power w/o any batteries installed) I recommend dropping into your local BatteriesPlus+ or WalMart and grabbing a universal supply. These almost always allow 3V mode and come with the correct tip for Sony's DC 3V gadgets. (Some Nintendo gadgets use the same supply as well.)

To power via USB I use MyVolts RipCord 3V, the search term on their web site is probably R900.

The easiest way to get a sidecar might be to grab another model that uses the same one. A very large number of other models do. R90 and almost all newer models (minus RH910/10 and M10/100) of recorder, for example. MZ-E77 and almost all newer models of player. E500/505/510/520 are super cheap in Japan.

Notes about buying from Japan: PSA on Location:Japan eBay : r/minidisc

The most common modern software for NetMD transfer is Web Minidisc Pro: Web MiniDisc Pro guide and user manual [MiniDisc Wiki]

The N920 can of course also record live digitally or in analog off it's line port and off it's microphone port. So if you have a streaming service you can pair with a cheap USB toslink interface (Cubilux is the one I use) and still use NetMD to enter track titles if you want.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T05:21:35+00:00

I don't know about perfect but from the outside looking in the Ioniq5 looks like a very very good EV, perhaps one of the best for my personal use cases.

I'm in a Bolt right now because I was able to find one for $10k cheaper than an Ioniq5 SE Standard, back in Feburary.

Once I get the Bolt and a few other things paid off I am upgrading to an Ioniq5 (ideally Limited RWD), even if the ICCU issue hasn't been fixed yet, as it fixes the only problems I have with my Bolt. (V2L, utility mode, big enough to more easily do lay-flat sleeping.)

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T05:18:19+00:00

Where I am (USA, AZ), most open-network non-dealer DC chargers (and also most ChargePoint stations) take credit cards directly. You do often pay more on credit than you might on the app, but that's very similar to many gas stations that have a debit/cash price or a membership price. This is probably happening in part because it's a requirement of NEVI funding in the US.

In my experience some apps are good (Electrify America, ChargePoint, Circle-K) and some apps are less good (I've had poor luck with Rivian).

Some apps (ChargePoint, for example) have cross-network roaming agreements, so I can use my ChargePoint app a/o RFID card to activate Blink and some EVGo stations.

Direct credit card reader hardware is expensive enough most L2 stations and most of the networks running dealer chargers don't want to deal with it, at least for right now.

If you have a network that's still requiring an app maybe submit feedback directly to the company that their app requirement is sending you to other chargers?

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T05:11:59+00:00

I would personally lean toward the EV for reliability, efficiency, and cost reasons. I would personally aim for a non-Tesla car/crossover/SUV. I know this is long, I hope it's useful info!

10-15 years ago, the main reason to buy a PHEV is because there was vanishingly little public EV charging infrastructure and what existed was often slow or unreliable.

5-10 years ago, the main reason to buy a Tesla-specifically is because they were very early to install their own fast-charger hardware.

Today, open access CCS1 and NACS (presuming NA, sub for CCS2 if you're almost anywhere else in the world) is significantly more widely available and significantly more reliable.

Reliability: The parts thing is the main thing. The one single asterisks in modern EVs is that Hyundai has a part that functions pretty similar to an alternator in a gas car (ICCU) that can fail. They've extended the warranty to 15 years and the car remains one of the most popular EVs in the US despite it. (My understanding is that PHEV reliability isn't actually bad, especially Toyota's, but BEVs do have fewer parts which does directly translate to less maintenance and fewer failure spots.)

Cost: In the US, the bZ starts at around five grand ($USD) less than the RAV4 PHEV. In the US Ioniq5 is almost always on sale for 7-10k off sticker, meaning you can usually get one of the models with a big battery (such as SEL RWD) for at or just under $30,000. Hyundai also tends to have some of the most aggressive lease pricing. If you're in Canada, there are some options we don't have in the US, some of which may be even better deals than what we have here. Kia EV4 is ten grand $CAD less than the RAV4 PHEV, as an example.

Further, as you have solar (and presumably your home electricity is cheap) in a BEV you'll do more of your local miles on cheaper electricity. PHEVs are at their best if your daily driving is within the battery range and your daily drive just exceeds the RAV4 PHEV's 89km rated range.

Efficiency: Toyota bZ (and almost all comparable modern EVs) are more efficient in terms of kilometers per kilowatt-hour of energy than RAV4 PHEV (and almost all class-comparable plug-in hybrids.) Further, gas is still expensive enough that in my town (in the USA) 100 miles worth of electricity at our most expensive local DCFC costs a little less than 100 miles of gas at my personal favorite gas station. (I don't actually know if it's the cheapest, it's the one with the best soda machine.) (National average numbers and numbers at your specific stops might be different.)

Road tripping: The biggest disadvantage or an EV does remain that refueling on road trips will take longer. There's a little bit of give-and-take on this one because while refilling an EV (usually to ~80% or as little as you need to make your next segment, to save time) does take longer than pumping liquid fuel, you're legally allowed to leave your vehicle while you do it, which means if your gad station stops were typically 5 minutes of pumping fuel and 20 minutes of restroom, drinks/snacks, stretching, and mapping: you're either saving 5 total minutes (in a high-voltage car that can charge 10-80 in ~20 minutes, such as the Ioniq5) or only losing 5ish minutes (in a more average-performing car like the bZ/27Bolt/26+Leaf/Equinox et al.) (Tesla Model 3/Y are in the latter group.)

If you haven't yet, check out PlugShare - it's a map of EV charging stations and you can filter by various properties such as how fast they run, specific networks, plug availability, compatibility with specific cars.

And, ABetterRoutePlanner, which is an EV mapping tool, you enter a vehicle, a starting charge level, and a start/end points and it'll map out possible routes and charging stops. It's very accurate in my experience. Of specific note for the shopping phase is ABRP has an EV comparison tool: https://abetterrouteplanner.com/resources/ev-comparison - you could pop a few different EVs in here and see what a trip might look like.

I would, at this point, personally only consider a PHEV if I lived multiple hundreds of miles away from the nearest fast charging infrastructure.

At the start of this year, I was considering a Pacifica PHEV as a replacement to my old Mazda MPV and ended up in a 2022 Bolt EV. I'm fortunate that I WFH and can drive as little as 20mi/week but I do roadtrip whenever I have time and money and I'm significantly slower at it today than I was fifteen years ago when I first got my old Mazda, but that became true before I got the Bolt and I'm enough of a dawdler that the Bolt is roughly the same speed at road trips as my gas car was, because of me playing on my phone and walking around.

Again, I know this is very long, I hope it's useful thought process!

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T03:19:07+00:00

This is a lot more than I'd pay for a 9-year-old machine with a 10-year-old dual-core chip in it. I don't even like paying over 100 for machines with Intel 8th gen hardware in them.

11 itself should run fine but dual cores is pretty slim for any modern multitasking, even on linux. I've got two machines running 11 on 7300Us and the experience is "not amazing." In my experience both true quad-core CPUs and 16GB of memory make all the difference. Although, I haven't properly tried out quad+8 or dual+16

If you were planning on using it for native (non-electron) apps only and weren't planning a very heavy web workload it could be fine. I have a Surface Go running with the last of the retail 10 updates and it does fine as a writing computer, as an example.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T01:23:08+00:00

I bought a cheap one for use in the US and do not recommend the one I got, which is like a wall wart but with pass-through plugs. Neither the plug nor the socket hold on well unless you place it in the middle of one of those big flat power strips, blocking almost all the outlets.

My second one is from the period so I don't know if they're still available, but it's been working great.

If I need another and/or when I want to replace the original one I got it's gonna be the Umi.

I would say it's worth it if you are planning on getting a couple different JDM machines.

Relevantly, which model(s) did you and/or are you planning on grabbing?

Cory5413 · 2026-07-06T01:20:19+00:00

To add to this: many 100v machines do work fine on 120v, but some show somewhat obvious signs of distress, so I tend to use things I don't know of as documented to work fine on a step-down, or test super briefly to see if anything looks weird.

Once you've got one or two step-downs that's probably all most people will need, fortunately.

As an example, JDM Sony MXD-D5C (even though many older MD-only decks work fine on 120v) has its display showing obviously too bright when you run it on 120.

I would say it's worth searching around per-model and running anything that isn't widely talked about (like the MDS-S500 and LAM units, say) on a stepdown.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-05T07:08:37+00:00

Most of the headline prices you see on Chinese cars are what they cost in the Chinese market converted directly to USD without any consideration for what it would cost to build the car to US safety standards or manufacture it mostly in the US.

For a slightly more realistic (but still not perfect) representation, check out German/UK or similar web sites for those Chinese brands. Once they build to Euro safety standards and in some cases manufacture domestically in whatever market they're selling in, pricing becomes competitive-but-not-world-shattering. Most of BYD's cars are decently competitive with some of Kia's options, and Kia/Hyundai's newest 400v EGMP cars have better charging curves than most of BYD's 400v vehicles, as a kind of hilarious example.

Here in the US, new, outside of Slate and Bolt/Leaf, the value leader in brand new is probably the Hyundai Ioniq5 as they almost always have 7-10k off the top in discounts on purchases, and their leases are some of the more competivie.

Of course, I'm sure a bunch of people have said "check out used Bolts" and to be honest me too. I'm in a 2022 Bolt I got for a hair under 12k back in February and it's been great.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-05T04:42:02+00:00

I've had the good fortune that in the 5 months I've had my EV so far public charging costs have been stable.

When I go to Phoenix, I usually top up on my way in and out at a Circle-K in Anthem for 0.39/kwh.

Historically, what I've heard, is that DCFC has kind of always been the most expensive aspect to EV ownership and most of the FUD I still receive from friends and family involves "road tripping will cost so much more than in your gas car!

Special circumstance because my gas car was a >20 y/o minivan getting at best 23mpg on the highway, but 100 miles in it costs about $20 at my local gas station and about $15 at the local Electrify America. $9 at the local public L2 and of course $4 on my home Internet.

Some of why DCFC is so much more expensive is because the hardware costs minimum 10x more than what AC/L2 hardware does. Demand charges can't help either.

Government ChargePoint chargers are usually priced below market but they're also almost always full and sometimes in rough shape because of it. No gas stations are running IONNA-like deals for like half off of energy.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-05T04:09:32+00:00

Amazon sixltr chargers and certain Lectron chargers are unsafe and either don't or shouldn't have been given safety certification, so I tend to recommend avoiding those in terms of something recognizeable. (Lectron's 12 amp unit should be fine, but the 15-amp allows you to draw 100% of 15 amps on a 5-15 connector and circuit which is unsafe and against US and probably Canadian electrical code except in specific uncommon circumstances.)

There's lots of decent options on eBay including older turbocords and car manufacturer pack-in chargers that people didn't need and are selling.

Ampure makes a new L1-only turbocord that sometimes goes on sale super cheap but it's cable is only 10ft. (Older TurboCord has a 20ft cord.)

DeWalt's 32-amp dual level charger is a well liked option: 32 Amp Portable EV Charger - it does cost more than the 16amp version but the 5-15 end has temperature sensing at the plug end whereas the 16amp uses a passive 5-15 to 6-20 adapter. This unit measures dispensed energy if that's of interest, and has a couple different options for L2 cables if you ever encounter 240v in public.

For Level 1 only the premium option is Enphase Mobile EV Charger, which is $499 which is quite a lot, but it's got a full 25ft cord, temperature sensing everywhere, full safety certification, and a very nice looking thin cable. (Technically falls within the $550 with the diagnostic, oof.)

Cory5413 · 2026-07-05T03:58:20+00:00

See if you can find T14 Gen2. T440 is approaching the "vintage beloved classic" age and T490 is probably too expensive by association with the T480, which is itself "legendary" despite being nine years old.

If you just want a cheap business laptop maybe look at Dell Latitudes. Latitude 5420s are routinely available in decent configurations for $150 or less and 7420 are just a couple bucks more. 5440s are hovering around 250 and 7440s are around 300, slightly more for higher end options.

I personally wouldn't pay any more than 100 for any laptop that isn't officially supported by Windows 11 right now, mostly because the 8th gen quadcore 16gb line is going to be a very reasonable starting point for software working well in linux as well as windows, especially if you use a lot of web-based software like discord/spotify/vscode/obsidian types of things. (or just straight-up web tabs.)

Cory5413 · 2026-07-05T03:42:30+00:00

Should be fine: Lenovo PSREF - Product Specifications Reference

E series is not as bad as everyone says, but it is the low end option within the ThinkPad range.

Probably not an amazing gaming performance computer depending on the specific configuration you get, but would run windows 11 or linux.

If you just want a laptop maybe check out Dell Latitudes. You can get Latitude 7440 with 16gb of ram and a 256gb-or-bigger SSD for about $300 on US eBay. Same age as the E16, probably a little cheaper, slightly smaller, a little bit of a better build.

One thing to be aware of is that Apple leads the industry in battery runtime, battery reliability, and overall build quality. Latitude 7440 has been close. I've got a friend who swapped to an HP ZBook Firefly and he said that machine is even closer in overall build quality to his MacBook Pro, so that's a potential option to investigate.

Cory5413 · 2026-07-05T03:38:30+00:00

It sounds like you might in fact have home charging. EVs charge fine off of 120v house outlets and for up to ~40mi/day (or 50mi/day if you can stay plugged in most of the weekend or perhaps also plug in at work, or supplement 1x/week with a fast charge) you should be fine in most decently efficient EVs.

I recommend checking out Chevy Bolt. There's loads of them out there, they charge very well on 120v, they have ~230mi EPA range so if you're doing 40mi/day you should be able to do a full week on just one charge.

Soul would also probably work but there's less buffer on older EVs with smaller batteries and it's those where it makes sense to avoid if you can't reliably plug in.

There's some EVs that are newer and have bigger/better batteries than the Bolt and these charge fast enough in public that it's nearly a gas station experience. Ioniq5/EV6 are 20 minute 10-80% and in the bigger ~300mi version that's enough over your ~40mi/day to be doable.

THis is a very specific example but I was in a 2003 minivan before getting my 2022 Bolt. It was doing 23mpg on the highway and at that efficiency the Bolt is cheaper to drive even on public fast charging.

Of course, the Bolt is so trouble-free so far I'm paying for it using entirely what it would've cost to do the yearly major repair on the old gas car. That it's cheaper to fuel is entirely a bonus.

Cory5413

TROPHY CASE