David Chapman wrote:

SONY have recently discontinued the miniature 7-pin connector and
lead (to bare ends) that is used to connect accessories to the Remote
Digital I/O connector on the SONY TCD-D7 or TCD-D8 DAT recorders (SONY
Part Number 1-751-146-11).

God, I hate those things. I think that same connector is also used on
some of the Sony video cameras.

My company produces a special intelligent dual remote controller for
SONY DAT recorders to start/stop and record simultaneously on two DAT
recorders from a radio or telephone source, and until recently we have
been regularly purchasing the leads from SONY as spares. When we tried
to order a further supply of 24 leads from SONY recently we were
informed that that particular lead was now obsolete and that there was
no alternative available. I find this very surprising, and MOST
inconvenient, since although these recorders are no longer advertised
they are still widely used by professionals in the UK and, no doubt,
elsewhere in the world.

Did you hear about the new cure for AIDS? They're going to put a Sony
part number on it, and then nobody will be able to get it. This sort of
thing is very typical behaviour for Sony.

Does anyone in this NG knows of any alternative supplier of the
miniature SONY 7-pin moulded plug and lead, or even just a non-moulded
7-pin plug to which we can connect our own lead? I guess that the plug
may be a unique SONY design but, since they seem to have discontinued
it, I'm hoping that someone else may be able to produce a replacement to
meet the continuing need for spares. FWIW, our interface is directly
wired to all of the seven of the pins in the connector - audio is sent
to the recorder via the wiring, not optically.

In the short term, you might try the Oade Brothers, who may have some
of the connectors in stock; they buy the Sony DAT cables as spares to
make up all sorts of adaptors. In the long term, your only solution
might be to get an Asian outsourcer to make you up some, which means
probably a minimum of five or ten thousand and throwing most away.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."