Here's the Sony ZS-M30 Personal MD System, which mine is unused! Very hard to find in this condition. I love these early 2000s boomboxes because they always have oodles of character. Everything on mine works, except the LCD is blank. This is due to the LCD zebra graphite type cable rotting away inside the connector on the main PWR board. Yes, I did recap it, with no effect. This is a very common problem, and most of these do have blank LCD screens by this point. Many will tell you a simple recap is all it needs, but Sony decided to use a flimsy graphite type flex cable to connect with a ZIF connector to the main board. The metal pins in the ZIF connector put pressure on and damage the graphite on the flex cable, leaving it unable to provide a connection. With its lack of LCD functionality aside, this is a beautiful unit, and it was most likely marketed at kids, based on the cute colors and "game mode". Sony included a PS2 adapter cable in the box (really just RCA composite video to 3.5mm video adapter) and claimed you could set this unit in front of a small TV to provide better sound than the TV speakers. This is true, as most small TV speakers are not great at all. Sound wise, it is a 4 speaker unit, and has Panorama sound, in addition to MEGA BASS, which both cannot be active at once. It sounds decent, and more than you'd expect for something of this time period and cost. Reminds me of the AIWA CSD-FD82 I reviewed a few years ago, but with a much better sound execution.
Most of the Sony ZS range had interesting styling and features (says the person with a ZS-D55 as his Avatar ). Being more complicated they do seem to be more failure prone than the basic Radio Cassette boomboxes from the 1980s.
Like Radio always says, some of these later models can sound really good but they are much more difficult to find.
Agreed. My collection of these things is growing, but I only buy them open box or new, and usually I have to wait awhile and source from Japan... I found a few of these beat up on Aleado, one of them has a working LCD, I will buy and source it for the part. Thankfully, the donor has no working MD or CD... so not a loss.
