[ragemage]

Hi guys,

I haven't posted here in quite a while, but I've been doing some diligent lurking. I've taken a particular interest of late in threads about classic PCDPs...

...when I was 11/12, my Dad worked for 2 years in Saudi Arabia (we're from Ireland). One Christmas he came back with a Sony D-T66 as my Christmas present. This was an awesome gift for any kid to get back in 1991/1992. I loved it. CD players were almost unheard of in my home town in Ireland back in those days. I never had too many CDs to play on it, and lacking any older brothers or sisters to guide me, I wasn't nearly as into music as I am now, but I loved it anyway, even if my music taste was non-existant back then.

...So I'm at home for Christmas at the moment and my mum says to me "Hey.. I have a box of your things here that you might want to have a look at...". So I'm like, "Yeah... sure... I'll have a look at it in a minute...". So she pulls it out... brings it over to me.... and low and behold, there it is- MY OLD D-T66!!!! w00t!

I couldn't believe it, seriously. This thing is, what, 14-odd years old now? I couldn't find a charger for it in the box, but I did find a custom leather case that my Dad had made for it, the original rechargeable battery (not rechargeable any more- ha!) and the AA-battery adapter.

And guess what? I got even luckier...

I bought my sister a cheap Bush PCDP a couple of Christmas's ago, which broke down on her recently. I butchered it a few days ago for its stereo jack in order to construct a makeshift stereo splitter cable for the home PC here, so that my folks can use Skype on a headset without having to unplug the speakers from the soundcard etc. (I was quite proud of that actually!) Anyway, it turns out that the charger for the Bush uses the same voltage as the D-T66! At first it didn't work, but then some childhood memories came back to me. I had a vague memory of having to scratch some rust off the contacts on the power socket to get it to work with the old charger, so I gave that a try with a precision screwdriver. And guess what? It's working now! It's still a bit fiddly: the power cuts out if you don't keep the cable at a certain angle, but hey, that's not much of a problem- it's not like I'm going to be moving it much.

Guys, the sound out of this thing is something else. I was just listening to Californication on it using my E2Cs. Anything over volume level 2 and your ears would be blown off. Seriously. This thing is ridiculous.

Anyway... that was a bit of a long-winded story, but what can I say... I was pretty excited about this find!

Barry

PS
I haven't tried the line-out yet, but from what I've read it's supposed to be excellent.

 

[Oddball]

Congrats on your rediscovery of your old PCDP. Those vintage Sony Discmen are really something, aren't they? It's a pity they don't make them like they used to anymore.

 

[adam917]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oddball Congrats on your rediscovery of your old PCDP. Those vintage Sony Discmen are really something, aren't they? It's a pity they don't make them like they used to anymore.

Looks like I'm way too late to experience these units.

My first portable unit was a (sucky) Sony D-E446CK (had ESP2 'SteadySound') that I was given on 1999-06-18. Only big problem with it was that it could skip even on brand-new CDs when the unit was sitting still on a table.

I have tried out a D-303 lent to me from a friend and the screen was nice when you plug in a mains adaptor (so you can see the backlight), but that thing skipped a _whole lot_. Remaining time and S/PDIF TOSlink was cool too. So I didn't care for this player much, as I usually listened to my CDs on a portable and when I even tapped this old unit, it skipped!

I did notice that both the D-303 & D-E446CK were louder than any Sony units afterwards (but at least my next Sony units almost never skipped due to G-Protection!).

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by adam917 My first portable unit was a (sucky) Sony D-E446CK (had ESP2 'SteadySound') that I was given on 1999-06-18. Only big problem with it was that it could skip even on brand-new CDs when the unit was sitting still on a table.

Unfortunately, lots of PCDPs do that (in my experience). I think it's due to less-than-stellar transports on many of them, possibly combined with batteries that are starting to run down. It really messes up the listening experience if/when it happens, and a player that did it more often than very rarely I would get rid of. That's one advantage DAPs have (even over full size CDPs) is that they'll never exhibit behavior like this.

 

[Filburt]

The "ESP2" units, in my experience, were particularly bad about that. I had a D-E775 that skipped extremely easily as well. The ESP was almost totally useless. I guess that's why they phased out ESP2 fairly quickly and introduced "G-Protection" thereafter.

 

[tattoou2]

Congrats, that's great!

 

[adam917]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Filburt The "ESP2" units, in my experience, were particularly bad about that. I had a D-E775 that skipped extremely easily as well. The ESP was almost totally useless. I guess that's why they phased out ESP2 fairly quickly and introduced "G-Protection" thereafter.

I'm very glad they phased out ESP2. Was the D-E775 the highest model of that series? I was wondering which model # that was, as I wanted to see some photos of it again. I believe MSRP was a ridiculous (compared to the cool slide-in CD G-Protection D-EJ01 that came out a year later for 'only' 349.95!) 449.95 USD.

 

[Filburt]

775 was around 160 USD when I got it. I think the top of the line was the D-E905 back then, which probably went for around 350 or so.