msycamore said:
Great to see you're doing everything you can to improve on your previous work, Althor! Too late for the sample, care to reupload or have you all come to a decision already? Also nice to hear you are planning a THX-cap. Man, you're a machine! Keep up the good work! :)
Nothing definitive yet. I've not gotten any feedback yet on the reference disc captures. Here's some screenshots and on absw i've posted the raw reference disc video files which are about 10GB. I'm currently uploading R7G-SWJSC-5xRAW. Side1 is finished now I believe. The R7G captures are not perfect but right now it seems to me that they are a step up from the HF9G. I figured now that the HF9G-SWJSC and R7G-SWJSC is available it can be evaluated by better eyes than mine. The reference disc tests are interesting too, for sure.
I am also currently trying to implement software decoding by capturing the full RF signal with a makeshift software defined radio in linux. There is a whole thread devoted to it over at LDDB so I won't delve into what that's all about here.
I'm not so great at compiling custom drivers and using the commandline for everything. I've got all of the hardware to do it now I just have to figure out how to use it lol. It's a slow process but if I succeed I'll definitely let everybody know.
UPDATE: Well the R7G is not tracking right. It begins looping and you can't fast forward past it. It started on side B but is now doing it on side A as well. I believe the motor holder is maybe broken and/or the slider/rail mechanism is gummed up. The player is in excellent condition but if it hasn't been used for ages stuff like this happens. The m-holder on these is notoriously brittle apparently.
Anyway, I've ordered the m-holder and new belts. The new m-holder is made from much more durable material from what I hear.
It's kind of a delicate operation though to remove the slider/rail mechanism and then pull out the optical pickup assembly to get to the tracking motor. I'm not going to spend 500 dollars to send it to the US to get fixed though and I'm certainly not sending it to a local shop so some 20 year old kid can try to fix it, break it even worse, and then tell me it was way beyond repair from the beginning anyway. So it seems if anybody is going to send this thing to the grave it'll be me.