I picked up this VHS player at the goodwill for 4.99 (why don't they just make it 5.00) and it seems to make recordings at about the same quality my SD cable box puts out.

Here is the problem. When you first turn it on the right half of the VFD comes on immideatly but on the left side it takes a few min to "warm up" and is dim still after it comes on. Is this just because of weak caps or is it a display on it's way out. Also for some reason if it stop the tape rewind it and then hit play it will not play the tape but if I eject it and press play it works just fine?

Common problem on those is the memory back-up capacitor leaks and messes up the board behind the display, causing oddball problems.

Thanks,
I will open it up today and see if I see anything. I gues it must be bad because when the power went out it lost the time.

Those are cool machines when everything's working. Unusual side loader, and had excellent picture quality for standard VHS.

Circled is "07" board that has the memory backup "supercap" on it. They would usually fail in 4-5 years, sometimes sooner. (Some mid-80s Fisher VCRs relied on their mem backup cap working for the initial reset when first plugged in. Bad mem cap, nothing would happen except one LED on front panel would be on constantly. :screwy:)


http://www.videokarma.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=179366&stc=1&d=1374072474

Thanks,
From what I have noticed this deck has better picture quality than one of my SVHS decks which were supposed to have slightly better picture than VHS. At least this one doesn't need a remote to do anything besides play and rewind like my other deck did :P

Would there be any problem with just removing the backup capacitor other than it losing the time and settings when unplugging it?

Would there be any problem with just removing the backup capacitor other than it losing the time and settings when unplugging it?Sounds like it's open anyway, so yes that will work. Closely inspect the circuit traces under and around that BU cap.

ok, I pulled it out. No corroded traces.