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Parkker IM
(lemmy.sdf.org)
[Reposting, as it didn't federate properly last time]
This is a parker IM I've had in my collection a while. I don't usually go for Parker branded pens. I usually find them a bit boring/vanilla. But when I saw this one come up pristine on Ebay, I thought I'd give it a go.
It looks nice, but sadly it doesn't seal well. There's a hole under the clip that lets air in. Why? I guess I could try to cover it.
Bonus device in the background.
Well i got into minidisc when I was a teenager. Before that I had tape Walkman and cd Walkmans. At the time MD was amazing. Re-recordable, small, sounds good.
I never had any official releases of music on MD. It was all home recorded. I didn't have the money for it.
Later came NetMD which allowed you to transfer music quicker, but the software (sonic stage from memory) was garbage.
That was near the end of MD's life, but I still really like them today. I like to buy used discs on Ebay and see what people have recorded on them.
There's actually a really good community of MD collectors and restorers on discord. They wrote a chrome app for copying music over netmd and it's loads better than sonic stage.
Anyway....
I remember Sony's SonicStage. Vividly. It was indeed garbage.
It was from that era when it was acceptable to roll your own user interface out of Windows DIB's, or whatever, and people would still take you seriously if your software had practically zero functionality but looked like it belonged in Minority Report. Everything was needlessly animated... super... slowly... The whole fucking thing was like navigating the menus on some 2004 Flash cartoon site.
I sold my NetMD Minidisc player years ago. Just the other week I stumbled on a cache of disks, though. I wonder what I'll ever do with them.
I liked my MD player a lot, maybe not as much as I loved the first Sony Walkman that was given to me when I was a kid — this thing was so cool. It went everywhere I went. For years. I dare not imagine how many batteries I wasted on it.
My MD looked very much the Sony in your photo, btw. I lost it a few years ago with the few remaining MD I had (all home copied). Who knows, maybe someone have found them and sold them to you on Ebay? (If so, I hope you like classical music and stuff like the Pink Floyd) :P
One time when my phone died and I had to send it off for repair, I unironically used my MD player for music out and about.
I'm sure I got some looks on the bus.
I have no doubt about that.
I just need to remember the look of people when I get out my paper agenda and a fountain pen to check availability or write some appointment and then see their face when I explain them why I so much prefer using an analog agenda to any digital one. It's even funnier when I explain them I prefer drafting all my writings longhand, using a fountain pen or even a good old... typewriter.
Awesome.
Please consider sharing some pics.
Thanks for replying. I was surprised just to see someone still had a player. I also recorded all my own discs since commercial releases weren't really available here in the USA. Sadly my player hasong since disappeared.
It's not too late to get involved: https://www.minidisc.wiki/
Discs themselves are getting harder to find sadly.