Ad Terras Per Aspera

Well, I guess that was fun. My VCR (a 15 year old Sony) decided to refuse to admit I just put a tape in it. The tape was loaded into the mechanism, but it showed all the indications that there was no tape in it (tape functions didn’t do anything, displayed time instead of tape position, etc).

So, I unplugged it and opened the case, and took a peak inside. For 15 years and the only cleaning for it done about 10 years ago (and probably not done well) it was very clean, and no noticeable metal oxide residue on the head. I tried pulling the tape holding assembly up and out to eject the tape, and it wouldn’t budge a single bit.

So, there was probably no way I could save either the tape or the machine, and I was considering throwing it out. So, I decided, lets try this one more time. I put the top of the case back on, and plugged it in, and hit eject. The tape popped out like normal. I put in a blank tape in for testing, played it, fast forwarded it, rewound it, everything works fine.

So, either I wiggled something into the position it was supposed to be, or the hour or so it was unplugged the micro controller reset. Go figure.