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I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies.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.



pendell
@pendell

On one hand I must congratulate FedEx for getting this package from Canada to my door in 3 days. Albeit it did cost $45, but it's still impressive.

Unfortunately the camcorder I spent $200 on doesn't work. Now, I'm not going to accuse the seller of lying, I do genuinely believe bro didn't have a power adaptor for it, otherwise he might have taken out the tape that was chilling in the mechanism, or left the battery with even the slightest hint of a charge in it.

After getting it powered on and removing the tape (and checking to confirm that, yes, the pinch roller was still intact), I began to test it by trying to play some tapes... It doesn't.

I mean, the tape mechanism will thread a tape, and you hit play and it starts running, but you'll never see or hear anything. And the mechanism... clicks. Like, a regular, consistent click-click-click. This doesn't seem to be affecting the tape tension across the head drum, otherwise it would trigger an error sensor. In fact, I get no errors at all. Just a clicking tape mechanism that won't read anything.

If you hit fast forward or rewind the clicking becomes much louder and faster. Ejecting and inserting tapes is no problem though, it has yet to eat any tape. It just clicks!

It even clicks when there's no tape in, the eject mechanism just clicks all on its own as it moves in and out.

Given the only piece of exterior rubber on this unit is decaying into goop, I have to believe this must be a belt issue. There's only one or two belts inside these kinds of mechanisms, and I've confirmed the clicking sound is only audible when the belt-driven components are running. Perhaps the belts sat in the same position for 10 years, and began to decay and took on a memory of that position, so that as I run them now there's indents in the belt that cause the clicking, and (hopefully) cause the inability to play back tapes, but without triggering any error sensors (I don't blame Sony for not building in "half-decayed belt retaining a shape" sensors)

But, like, god knows how difficult it could be to get to those belts. They're buried under everything in there. Maybe if you remove the entire mechanism it's easy to get at them from the back, I hope. But even then, it's a toothed belt, because of course it is, so I'd have to disassemble the thing just to be able to measure and count the teeth, and then order a replacement, wait a week, and then reassemble and just hope that was the actual problem to begin with?

This is a fun hobby!



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