pendell

Current Hyperfixation: Wizard of Oz

  • He/Him

I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies. Expect posts about These Things. I talk a lot.

Check tags like Star Trek Archive and Media Piracy to find things I share for others.



Technically, it's broken. But it's not a huge deal. I don't know why this didn't tick me off as much as it normally would - maybe because I'm optimistic it'll be an easy fix. This is the second miniDV Sony camcorder I've bought, and the second one to have its pinch roller rattling about loosely inside the tape mechanism. This must be a common design flaw, they're held in with plastic friction-fit bits that must come apart really easily, or break apart with age. Fortunately, there's plenty of people selling replacement bits online. A pair of tweezers and 45 seconds should have this puppy running like new.

And I do mean that - it has an hours meter in the menu (as all professional grade tape-based electronics do) that shows the drum has run for 10 hours max, and it's threaded a tape about 50 times max (there's a possibility this counter ticks up every time the eject mechanism cycles, even if a tape is actually threaded or not).

Combine that with the meter saying the camcorder itself has run for about 1,380 hours, I'm led to believe this was run in a tapeless environment. This is actually quite common, even today - at my high school, for example, we recorded the school news on big JVC HDV camcorders hooked up to a network recorder in another room, the tape drives had probably never once been touched. So I'm optimistic once I get that pinch roller back in place this thing will run like a dream!

Also ideally the replacement locking bits will fix that other Sony miniDV cam I have sitting in a box somewhere - which would be ideal since I already spent like $30 on a replacement screen for that camcorder after I got it before I discovered its tape mechanism wasn't working.


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