Scored a nice circa 1998 4-head stereo VCR at the ReStore yesterday. Details and photo here.

I've had several things that I started fooling around with and destroyed them. I just can't seem to learn "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Same. 

Quote from: TheUniversalDave1 on July 26, 2014, 11:09:16 PM

I've had several things that I started fooling around with and destroyed them. I just can't seem to learn "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Same. 

Yep, me_irl. I've destroyed some electronics, including mini tvs from tinkering with them, but they're working. I don't learn.

Well wouldn't you know it, just four days after I picked up the Memorex VCR, I walked into the local thrift store today, and scored this Panasonic 4-head stereo VCR for $2. It's a model PV-8450, made in 1998 in Japan. It appears to work absolutely perfect. I gotta buy a remote for it to make much use of it; luckily they are plentiful on eBay. This unit's quite a far cry from the junk 2002 Panasonic I picked up last summer.

Awesome!  I know for a fact that you can access the menu by pushing both the channel buttons on this one. I have one extremely similar. I may have the same one.

You can't; I tried. No go on the Memorex either.

I was able to program this one into a universal remote, but only the tape transport controls worked. Then - get this - I programmed the wrong code, and I was able to press one of the buttons to get the menu up! No way to change recording speed in the menu, though.

Well shucks. I was sure it would work on at least one of those. 

BTW, don't use a head cleaning cassette on any VCR with heads. Instead get a piece of copy paper and rip off a small peice, and wet it with 91% alcohol. Put it directly onto the head drum and spin.  Keep doing that until no more tape crap comes off. I've done that for years and have never had a problem. (But don't get carried away.)

Speaking of video stuff!  Guess what I'm (hopefully) getting tomorrow! A 1954 Zenith B&W TV. Saw it one CL for $75. Going to try to get it for under $62.

Yeah, I've heard of the paper trick. I use a cleaning cassette anyway - it's always worked whenever I needed to use it. Probably should do the paper at least once on all my VCRs, though. I use alcohol and a cotton swab for the linear heads, though.

That's a nice set; I hope you get it!

My interest in vintage VCR's has been rekindled quite by accident. I discovered that the place that I had my Sony SL-5000 and others was flooding. So I relocated them and took the SL-5000 apart to check for flood damage. Thankfully, it never got that far. After that, I took the SL-5400 out of the closet and took it apart. Then the SL-390, which worked for about four minutes and then broke.

The picture is of my VCR Holy Grail. The RCA VBT-200 from 1977. I've been looking for this VCR since I was about 12. I still don't have one, I found the picture on Google.

Ooh, nice. You know, the first VCR we had, when I was little, was a unit very similar to that. I don't know even who made it, but it was a top-loader with a VFD display on the right and a mechanical tape counter, and it had an incandescent lamp inside the tape compartment. It never really worked well during the time I knew it, and it was replaced in 2000.

Oh, back in September I got a remote for the Panasonic on eBay. I haven't tried it, but I know it works. I'll finally try it when I come home for Christmas.

Yep, that machine was definitely a late 70's, early 80's Panasonic made machine. In the early days, Panasonic made VCR's for RCA, Maganavox, Sylvania, Quasar, and a few others. They loved those incandescent tape lights. I have a Panasonic PV-1600 from 1981. It used to work excellent until the incandescent lamp went out. For a while, you could wiggle the lamp and it would work, but then that stopped working. That was about three years ago.

Wow; I knew about the others, but I would have thought RCA made their own stuff at that time. Interesting.

You should be able to replace that lamp - I assume it's a grain-of-sand bulb, although I don't know if it would be 120V or some low voltage.

I tried to replace the bulb once before, but I just ended up breaking the eject mechanism.

I've just been watching videos on Youtube of how to replace the electrolytics in a later mid 80's Panasonic. I have about half a dozen of them. They sold them under all of the above brands, and they're quite easy to find. I consider it Panasonic's last good chassis. But they have two big problems. The earlier ones had an idler tire which is almost always bad, and the much more serious power supply failure. The electrolytics often fail and the VCR works like crap. Here is an example.   And how to fix it.

Scored a nice Sony CCD-TR73 at a thrift store for $1.69 (Yes One Dollar and Sixty-Nine Cents Lol!)
Unfortunately it seems to have a loose connection but for less then two dollars I took the chance and lost

The viewfinder and external Composite video and the stereo audio go crazy unless I press really hard on the cassette area It will play and record but not reliably with a loose connection does anyone have an idea of where to look for the loose or bad connection?
Does anyone know how to fix these things? I really like the camera (It is a Video 8 AKA 8MM Video Cassette Hi-Fi Stereo model) So I would really like to fix this

I decided that I'm going to try to fix my Panasonic PV-1600. I unsoldered the bulb this weekend and shorted across the socket to see if the machine still works. It does, but the speed is way off and the eject still doesn't work. Studio Sound Electronics doesn't have a belt kit for this model, so I'll have to measure the belts and idlers the old fashioned way. I'm going to see if Radioshack has an LED that will work in place of the incandescent lamp. The machine uses the light to shine into two photo cells to know when the tape is at the end. I shined my flashlight into the photo cells when I took it apart, and the machine stopped.