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So you think fixing a GS1200 is complicated? Try a VHS player.
I told my grandson I was trying to fix my 1980 Sony VHS player, and he looked at me incredulously and said "why"! Well for several reasons, one being that I hate throwing away anything that can possibly be fixed, I also have quite a few old VHS tapes including many of the BFCC Armchair Odeon video's , and they don't make VHS players any more, and if I am going to throw it out anyway, then I may as well have a shot at fixing it.
Well after removing the cover I was able to see how the thing works. For anyone who has not seen a VCR thread up the tape around the spinning video heads, the sound head, and the tensioning arms, it is something to behold, an amazing accomplishment of mechanical and electronic engineering. Two rollers poking up underneath the little hinged lid of the cassette capture the tape loop and move down a long curved track around the video drum, sound head, and rollers. Correct tape threading is monitored by a couple of infra red sensors , if the tape position is messed up the procedure is aborted. A mechanical rotary mode switch tells the electronics what to do for the various loading, play, stop, rewind, eject commands.
This complex motion is achieved by a combination of weird looking gears and linkages. Hats off to the Sony engineers who came up with this brilliant design, it's amazing that VCR's ever worked at all. But then they had to do all this on a piece of equipment designed to sell at about $200.00 or less and still make a profit! So all the gears and other stuff are made from injection molded nylon, real complicated pieces which cost maybe a $1.00 each!
Anyway, after spending about 25 hours over a period of 4 days my VCR is now working 100%. The problem was a split plastic piece on the clutch assembly.
I told my grandson I was trying to fix my 1980 Sony VHS player, and he looked at me incredulously and said "why"! Well for several reasons, one being that I hate throwing away anything that can possibly be fixed, I also have quite a few old VHS tapes including many of the BFCC Armchair Odeon video's , and they don't make VHS players any more, and if I am going to throw it out anyway, then I may as well have a shot at fixing it.
Well after removing the cover I was able to see how the thing works. For anyone who has not seen a VCR thread up the tape around the spinning video heads, the sound head, and the tensioning arms, it is something to behold, an amazing accomplishment of mechanical and electronic engineering. Two rollers poking up underneath the little hinged lid of the cassette capture the tape loop and move down a long curved track around the video drum, sound head, and rollers. Correct tape threading is monitored by a couple of infra red sensors , if the tape position is messed up the procedure is aborted. A mechanical rotary mode switch tells the electronics what to do for the various loading, play, stop, rewind, eject commands.
This complex motion is achieved by a combination of weird looking gears and linkages. Hats off to the Sony engineers who came up with this brilliant design, it's amazing that VCR's ever worked at all. But then they had to do all this on a piece of equipment designed to sell at about $200.00 or less and still make a profit! So all the gears and other stuff are made from injection molded nylon, real complicated pieces which cost maybe a $1.00 each!
Anyway, after spending about 25 hours over a period of 4 days my VCR is now working 100%. The problem was a split plastic piece on the clutch assembly.
My wild guess is that in the next 20 years most house would still have some vhs tapes lying around, but absolutely no way to play them again since working vcr no longer exist.
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