Hi,

I've purchased a Sony DAT PCM-2700A on eBay a few weeks ago, to replace
my old DTC-57ES machine which left this world in the age of 15 *sob*.
Unfortunately the seller of the PCM-2700A has lost the manual and
doesn't know details about these modes, so I'm wondering if anybody
here knows an answer.

The DTC-57ES had already this various display modes explained in the
manual, which you get when pressing the "Counter mode" and one of the
number keys simultaneously. That manual only tells about the modes
1 to 3, which just switch the display intensity and the mode 4, which
changes the VU-meter display to a graphical tape position display.

Yesterday I learned from a web page, that "Counter mode" + "6" shows
the tape id 6 value (the SCMS bits). So I got curious and tried other
combinations. The only other useful combination seems to be "Counter mode"
+ "0", which shows a 12 digit value, which is either entirely hexadecimal
or at least in the last 6 digits, I don't know so far. My machine shows
a value like "04 01 21 XX FF FF". The XX are two hex digits, which are
incremented quickly (I'm not quite sure but it seems to be a bit faster
than once per sec) when the machine is in play mode. When the XX value is
at 5F, the next digit to the left is incremented and the XX value is
set to 00 again.

It looks like a head usage counter but I'm wondering what it actually
means, especially, since hex values are a bit uncommon for counting
the time...

Does anybody know how to read this value correctly? I search on the
web for hours but to no avail.


Thanks in advance,
Corinna