All about Minolta RD-175

If you're going to need to insert & remove something from a CF slot with any sort of frequency, be careful, because it's possible to bend the pins at the bottom of the slot, and this will usually spell the end of whatever device those pins are part of.

I have decided to start adding as much detail as I can to the database beyond the links. After not having touched my camera in a while, I pulled it out recently, and plan to start working with it some more. However, here are two common items that are easy fixes for very common issues I have seen with units sold on ebay. Pictures forthcoming.

1. Batteries - The original is a Minolta NP-500H, which is a 7.2v 1200mAh Li-ion battery. Although it is virtually impossible to find a functioning Minolta version, it is a the same size and shape as common camcorder batterys of the era. I have confirmed that Sony NP-F330, NP-530, NP-550 are all of identical size and will work in the camera with no issues. I have purchased several generic replacements of that type that also work. Replacements are cheap (5 USD + shipping) and plentiful, so fret not if your battery dies. See below for a photo of all of these various batteries. As you can see, there a couple of extra contacts for some of the Sony batteries, but the only important contacts for the camera is the two +/- pins on the sides (two small holes on either side of the bottom (on the picture) of the battery)



2. Battery Charger - Any Sony charger that will charge the above batteries will work. The main difference is that the Minolta charger has the ability to direct power the camera. The connector appears to be proprietary (off the charger, but not to the camera). If you want to find a charger that will work to charge batteries, I found that early Sony Mavica cameras that stored images on 3.5" floppy drives (MVC-FD92 etc) used NP-F330 and NP-F530 batteries. You can pick them up for cheap if you can't find a compatible generic charger. Just a small note, that if you buy a used Sony Mavica with charger and battery, buy it for the charger, and don't count on the battery being good as they are 15-20 years old by now.

As I get through more of my notes, I will continue to add details.

edit - Photo of batteries added.

Edited by ffrolvaag - 03 November 2016 at 00:03

Lens Compatibility:

Non-chipped lenses do not work. The LCD will display the following, but will not allow activation of the shutter or focus confirmation in the viewfinder. Up until you try to activate the shutter, the camera seems to work normally.

(attached is a non-chipped 58mm f1.2 Rokkor)

Chipped MF lenses do work. The camera will try to AF these lenses if you leave it in AF mode. Focus confirmation does work as well. I have both a Pentax 50mm f1.2 and Nikkor 50mm f1.2 ais, both of which are chipped and do work.

SSM lenses will not auto-focus, but otherwise works normally. (Oddly enough, the the camera balances a 70-400G better than an a900 w/grip )

Otherwise, it appears that any other chipped AF lens I have tried works as intended.

Thanks for sharing and yes i would for one be curious to see the rest of this brochure

I wonder what is item number 9992-0501 Optimate Optical Carrier

Today I am happy to report that I have future proofed (or at least greatly extended) the life of my RD-175. After a couple weeks of playing around, I have created a workflow to repeatedly to format a number of Compactflash (CF) cards in my RD-175's using windows XP laptop. The materials I used were:
1. Windows XP laptop with PCMCIA port
2. Adaptec 1460D SlimSCSI PCMCIA card with 50 pin centronics cable supplied with the card ($11 USD including shipping on Ebay). No drivers are necessary for this card with windows XP.
3. 50 pin centronics female to 50 pin centronics half pitch male adapter ($8 USD on Ebay)
4. PCMCIA CF adapter was plugged into the camera along with a 256MB or smaller CF card.
5. Minolta RD175 ver. 2.0 software along with the camera drivers previously installed on the computer (that was somewhat of an ordeal in itself).

Assuming you have these things, you can follow the exact sequence listed here on a XP laptop PC. If you deviate from this order in any way, the camera and computer will not recognize each other, so the order is critical.
1. Connect all the cables to both the camera and SCSI card. The camera and computer should be powered off.
2. Hold the "mode" button down on the camera for 3 seconds and then slide the the power button on from lock to on (still holding mode). "SCSI" and "ID-X" (where X is the ID #) will be displayed on the camera's display if done correctly.
3. Then you turn on your computer.
4. Open the Minolta RD-175 control software.
5. Select the "Settings" option on the menu.
6. Select the "Format" option.
7. Turn of the camera, close the software, and remove the CF card (or PCMCIA harddrive).
8. If you want to format another media, start at #1, and will need to restart the computer at step 3.

Velocina wrote: I think every "native" CF with nominal capacity below 256 Mb can be formatted directly into camera, connected to PC, but I've don't tried. I'm sure that my 1 Gb Sandisk ULTRA II cannot be directly formatted in camera (error code E8), but one partition on it of 250 Mb cans (199 free ...).

I can confirm that 256mb is the maximum native size. This is because I was repeatedly able to format multiple 256 mb CF cards using the process above, but was not able to format a 260MB PCMCIA harddrive (double the capacity of the 131 MB Maxtor drive that came with the camera). Apparently those 4 MB pushed it above the limit you noted.

As a general service announcement, I can provide anyone with the Minolta RD-175 drivers and control software free of charge (PC only). I do have the disks for Mac as well, but I am not sure how to copy them since I only have a PC, but don't want to part with them since they came with the camera. However, if you can't obtain all of the items I noted above (none of which came with the Minolta RD-175 except for the camera itself), I can either sell pre-formatted media, or format your 256MB or smaller media for you. You just need to send me a PM, and we can work out the details.

Edited by ffrolvaag - 11 March 2017 at 02:20

Yes, it does appear I did well. In my searching this was by far the least expensive SCSI adapter route at the time of this post. Adaptec made 1460A-D versions as well as a 1480 UltraSCSI version (more expensive). I see that the earlier versions are pretty cheap, but may not be fully XP compatible. Perhaps it was luck, but I happened to purchase two D versions for that price in separate auctions. All that being said, I strongly suspect any PCMCIA to SCSI or USB to SCSI cable will work as long as they are XP compatible. I would just urge anyone to search google for compatibility information on whatever card that they are considering to verify XP compatibility. Most of the SCSI PCMCIA cards are made for windows 98 an earlier computers and may have XP compatibility issues.

My next goal is to see if I can get this to work on my Windows 10 PC. The RD-175 software works, so it is just a matter of loading drivers and finding a compatible SCSI adapter for the computer. The newer computers have a smaller form factor for expansion cards than the previous generation of PCMCIA cards, so I will have to purchase another component to test this. At least I can now retire my windows 98 laptop, which I had maintained exclusively for the RD175.

I should be able to help, but it won’t be until later this month that I’ll be able to look for the files. Don’t let me be the one stopping anyone else stepping up to the plate!