Modding the PSP for MD playback

[I xfire I]

there are several problems with this, mainly this has all been said

but i know a bit about pcs etc and lasers, when the psp was first being devoloped by sony they could have used the MDs to hold the data for the games they wanted to have on the console, but then think pcs can read mds and that would be way to easy for pirating and getting copys of content. anyway so sony have obviously thought about it and came up with the umd format, its based on the MDs obviously it also has the case like a umd does, its just that you might be able to mod a umd drive bay to hold a MD but it wont get read as the psp is only set up with the laser and the lasers position to read umds.

what im thinking is if there is a way to make a external usb MD reader and mod it to work with the psp's usb port and make some kind of app that can access the reader. just a thought

[b8a]

Yeah, I realize that this is a pretty novel topic in the first place, but the external drive possibility is as good as a dead-end for my purposes. It's too far on the novel side, bordering on ludicrious (!_!) I'm trying to minimize the ammount of objects I'd have to carry around, so even if the external drive idea went anywhere, I'd be better off carrying a dedicated MD player anyway.

[I xfire I]

yeh, but i guess we can keep on dreaming

[John Vattic]

I've thought about this since the psp first came out.
i have an extra damaged(controls only) MD player and am looking for a broken psp on ebay(umd door broken only). If the psp could fit both discs then based on your research. you would only need to remove the minidisc slider cover to get access for the laser to the disc. this would be very beneficial to those of us with large minidisc collections.
Then if the umd rippers could rip the minidisc data to the memstick. we minidisc users would be in business.
but this is all academic and not worth the tedious engineering required.
but i may try if i can get the unit cheap enough. or maybe a bricked psp to tinker with the doors and UMD/minidisc fitting. but then again what is the size of a minidisc. i'm fairly sure it's more than 1.8 gig.
then again i'm a noob too so my words may mean blah blah to most.

[b8a]

The placement mechanism would be a little more and a little less complicated than that. Since the mechanism to automatically open the MD's slide is built into the doors on many MD players, I wouldn't think there would be any need to work around that. What makes the issue more complicated is the fact that UMD cartiridges are smaller than MD cartridges, along with the fact that the holes (that are used to lock the media in place) on the back of both media don't line up. If I thought that any of these were prohibitive hurdles, I wouldn't be continuing this thread, but it would deffinately take a bit of work to manufacture an even semi-elegant mechanism capable of hosting either MDs or UMDs. Although, one thought that has occured to me is to mod the system so that it's set to hold MDs by default, and then use a specially fitted "caddy" that would hold UMD's in place. In any case, I've seen friends perform more miraculous modding feats. The real question I have as of right now, is whether or not there's any hope of reading data off of an MD once it's in place.

Yeah, MD players are going dirt cheap on eBay, so finding testing parts for MD's isn't a problem. I've even been able to find several semi-affordable PSP's as well, so whether this ever goes anywhere or not, I hope to have fun looking into it in the near future.

By the way John, I'm farily sure that the data capacity of a MD isn't even close to a gig, much less 1.8 gig. If I remember right, it's about half as much as a CD, or about 360MB. There are "mega" capacity MD players out there, but they are only able to achieve that much storage thanks to massive compression (not taking into account the newer hi-MD's)

[samidgley]

That would be a rather ace idea if it would ever work, I used to love my MD. So if you ever do have an success it'll be interesting

[John Vattic]

now that you mention it you're right the md's are smaller capacity due to a compression. unless the disc is solely atrac 3 it probably wouldn't read. also atrac 3 is the compression method the minidiscs use when putting music on an MD through usb. so this probably is impossible.
sorry for the hype.
I hate proprietary crap like this.

[sideshowbob]

ok.. i just drilled a hole in the disk from a UMD.. It didn't work... In the CD drive it said File System Unknown.. But it did say there was a disk inserted.. 0 bytes free, 0 bytes used total: 0 bytes.

In the DVD drive it said please insert disk into drive G: oh well... Theres LCS gone..