Minidisc in 2026

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Whilst tidying up and throwing out / clearing up a room in the house, I re-found my minidisc players and discs.  I then remembered that I did have a play around with a Mac and minidisc quite a few years back (2017), article HERE: https://tonyisageek.blogspot.com/p/sony-minidisc.html


I wondered if I could still use this device as I have 100s of mini discs and this device allows you to RECORD too.

Wow! how times have changed!

A really cool person has made a web site application that can interface directly to the mini disc player from an Android phone using Chrome web-browser.

https://web.minidisc.wiki/

Would be rude to not give it a go, wouldn't it.

Here's the web site support page: https://www.minidisc.wiki/guides/webminidisc/start


I plugged in an old USB cable to my Android phone, started up Chrome and entered the URL.  From the drop-down [Connect] box, it showed the NetMD device, awesome!  I believe I had to grant permissions and created a folder that can be used by the device.

You can control the device itself, selecting a song title and pressing PLAY and it plays the track?!

Oh, and then I found "RETRO MODE":


Oh and then I thought, there is a music file on the Android phone, can I push it to the minidisc disc?
Oh YES, yes, you can!  It does the conversion, you see the update in the web browser, it took a minute or so:

and there it is!
I then disconnected and yep, it works fine.  I could even rename the song titles to be more useful.

I then found that the "old" rechargeable batteries only lasted about 30 seconds - not very useful?! well, they were from 2017.  So I ordered a couple of new one's for £20.

This should now breathe some new life into using the minidisc player.

Welcome to 2026 - the year of going back to the 1990s :-D

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