Comment by cbmuser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cbmuser | Hacker News Reader

Edit: I have finally created a separate organization for the project now: https://github.com/linux-minidisc/linux-minidisc

Original project creator and co-author of the linux-minidisc project here.

Awesome to see my project on the frontpage of HN, maybe I can use this opportunity to find new contributors to move the project forward as it has been a little dormant due to lack of time.

The upstream repository is currently located on my Github page [1], but I would like to create a separate Github project so that others can easily become maintainers and help review PRs and so on. There are a couple of patches in forked projects which improve the NetMD functionality of "libnetmd" in many ways. However, I would like to create a separate project first before I want to merge any new patches.

For creating a new project, I was thinking for changing the name as the original name "linux-minidisc" is rather misleading as the software isn't Linux-only. It works on any operating system with libusb support and is known to work on Windows and macOS.

Furthermore, I think the GUI transfer application - QHiMDTransfer - needs an overhaul. Luckily, the NetMD and HiMD functionality are in separate libraries, libnetmd and libhimd, so it should even be possible to create a new, more professional GUI application or even write plugins to existing music players like Amarok.

The Python code mentioned in this article are actually no longer in development as it was supposed to be a proof-of-concept only. We used a Google Summer of Projects slot from the VideoLAN project to have a student work on implemeting the full NetMD functionality in the libnetmd which was forked from the original libnetmd.

If anyone is interested in helping project wit the aforementioned tasks and/or joining us, please let me know. This project is the only known software which is actually able to decrypt most of the tracks on NetMD and HiMD (not all though [2]).

> [1] https://github.com/glaubitz/linux-minidisc

> [2] https://wiki.physik.fu-berlin.de/linux-minidisc/doku.php#sta...

Not sure how much the projects diverged, but I forked a fork of a fork, about 60 commits apart it seems. In any case, this fork worked for me, not your original one. I since sold the MD hardware, but in case you have some time, you could perhaps pull some stuff back in from [1] or any fork closer to you. I remember speaking at least to one of the other forkers saying upstream was unresponsive at the time (I guess that may have been you ;)). IIRC, this all branches out before the Python stuff was added. I used cmdline only, but with great pleasure.

[1] https://github.com/brenthuisman/linux-minidisc

Thanks. I'm already in contact with the owner of the fork with most of the fixes to figure out how we can merge all these changes into the upstream project. He has promised me to open PRs to get the changes merged upstream.

I'm happy to add new members to the Github organization.

I’ve spent some time with the code in the past few years (glad it exists for my recent interest in MD!). I’ll look through the (minor) changes I have and see if there is anything worth pushing back (I seem to recall something about time outs on macOS during download).

I have both Net and Hi players and a collection of older ATRAC3. If there is anything I can put any of these resources toward (running tests, etc.), I’ll see what I can do.

Thank you for a great project that allowed me to finally (25 years later) pursue my interest in MD.

Looks like a cool project! I have a box of old mini discs (and a Sony player) in the basement that I've been wondering what to do with. I would love to give the project a try and get them converted for digital archival.

Great. Looking forward for new members.

The project mailing list can be found here:

> https://lists.fu-berlin.de/listinfo/linux-minidisc

For archiving purposes, I recommend getting a Sony MZ-RH1 (and the MZ-RH200 IIRC) as its the only device that can upload regular MD tracks using NetMD over USB. All the other devices can only playback over SPDIF.

FWIW, VLC also contains a universal decryptor written by us for any OpenMG media files saved by SonicStage. So if you have recordings on your hard disk which cannot be decrypted with SonicStage anymore because you forgot to backup the decryption keys, VLC should just work.

I archived all my Minidiscs a few years back using SonicStage. My Minidisc was my field recorder. Archiving was a very emotional experience- both hearing the voices of dead friends, and prying my own history from a futuristic and beautiful but frustrating and pointlessly locked down machine.

Wish I had linux-minidisc then. I wrote about the experience here http://www.danreetz.com/blog/2013/07/26/finishing-minidisc/

For what it’s worth you can just rename the github repo into another project and it will setup a redirect.

You can also add maintainers while it’s inside your namespace.

I created a new organization, transferred the repository now and invited members. Worked like a charm.

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