Jack Swindell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Let's do some "wild guessing." If there was a one third loss of > capacity through the modulator -> ATRAC encode -> MiniDisc -> ATRAC > decode -> demodulator sequence, we would get about 94MB of useable > capacity, or more that a mebagyte per minute. [...] Hi Jack, It's kind of a fun idea, but isn't it a little late for this? I mean, Sony tried to make a proper data drive based on the MD, but couldn't market it cheap enough to gain any market share. Today you can get a 120MB USB SuperDisk drive (see http://www.macconnection.com/scripts/productdetail.asp?product_id=94841 ) that is perfectly suited to storing computer data and runs fast (~40MB/minute) for about $150. This is about the cheapest we see audio MD recorders available today. Granted the SuperDrive media is about $10/each. On the other hand, I don't wish to rain on the parade of any "hacking" projects, and you could certainly have a lot of fun trying to figure out how much data could be stored on an MD. The modem would naturally be done in software, on the PC, and you could have a little self calibration program that you ran to empirically (through trial and error) find out the max allowable modulation rate based upon the characteristics of the ATRAC in question (Sony ATRAC 1,2,3,4,4.5,R, Sharp 1,2,3,4,5,6? etc.) and the noise level of your sound card. Sounds like a lot of work though too, especially since controlling the record/playback functions of the unit is an entire ball of wax until itself. Rick p.s. in Audio mode the MD's raw capacity is ~160MB ----------------------------------------------------------------- To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
