I recorded my first minidisc in over a decade last night.
And after I finished, ejected the disc so it could finish writing the table of contents, and when I reinserted the disc to listen, the machine took a crap. C13 Read Error. Ugh. And it wasn't just that disc—it was even brand new, unused ones. And of course the seller I bought it from said it was fully functional and doesn't accept returns.
Being a nerd that's still relatively good at fixing shit, I did a hasty search online and ended up getting very depressed. Firstly, because there wasn't a whole lot of info out there and a lot of it was, "Take it to a Sony Service Center." Yeah, like that's an option any more…
I did all the suggested troubleshooting: cleaning the laser's lens, blowing out the mechanism with compressed air, reseating the ribbon cables that run between the mechanism and the main circuit board, etc. But none of it worked.
Anyhow, after mulling it over while wide awake at 4 am this morning, I thought about one other possible culprit: dried lubricant on the sled rail.
After getting ready this morning, did a search on YouTube and found one video that described the error and what needed to be done. It was basically everything I'd already done, but I felt that if the guy in the video could resuscitate a machine that was in much worse condition than mine, I certainly could get this one working.
I pulled the top off again and did everything I'd done last night and in addition, ran a Q-tip drenched in isopropyl alcohol along the rail and under the gears that drive the mechanism. I cautiously inserted the disc from last night and viola! it worked!
So fingers are crossed. As I type this I'm adding a few more tracks to the disc from last night and so far everything is working as it should. The true test will be when I'm finished and it has to write to the TOC (Table of Contents) before ejecting…
UPDATE: It worked!
UPDATE #2: It's hosed. After recording two discs, the error returned. After popping the cover was obvious the disc was refusing to spin up, triggering the C13 error. I spoke to the seller this afternoon and she's agreed to refund what I paid for it upon return of the unit. On the positive side, the MZ-S1 arrived today and it works like a champ.
