I have an old Tatung VCR from the early 80's that was purchased new. I will post pics when I get home.

Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to make it work again. It served a good 16 years before I bought the Sharp VCR I have now. The problem is, when a tape is inserted and I press play, it will start all of the operations and bring the tape most of the way onto the head, but then it will just sit there for a few seconds before retracting and shutting off. The tape never starts turning.

Any ideas what this could be? Could it be a relay of some kind?

It's possible you have a belt or idler wheel slipping. The rubber perishes after so many years and needs to be renewed. I'm not a VCR expert but this has been my observation.

prb shows an idler tire ST1.77 for model VRH8300U

prb shows an idler tire ST1.77 for model VRH8300U
Close, mine is an 8200U. :) I'm not sure what you mean by "ST1.77" or "PRB". Since I haven't pulled it out for a while, I'm going to go mess with it and maybe even bring back a video.

EDIT: HERE (http://s14.photobucket.com/albums/a327/Hi_Ho/Tatung%20VCR/?media=video&sc=8) are a couple pictures and a video of what happens. The constant hum/click sound in the video is not the VCR, it's the camera, I don't know why it does that.

In THIS (http://s14.photobucket.com/albums/a327/Hi_Ho/Tatung%20VCR/?action=view&current=P1030629.flv) video you can see when I push that black thing in the tape will start moving but it still stops anyway. I guess I should also mention that it does rewind and fast-forward.

PRB is Projector/Recorder Belt

The modern company that owns PRB is:

http://www.russellind.com/prbline/index.html

Thanks, I'm not sure if that's what it is though. It seems like a relay or solenoid not kicking in. Am I totally off base here?

I bet there is a mouse inside jamming it up..
:)

Wiseguy, I'm in serious LUST over yr avatar....

I don't think there is much you can do with an old Tatung. Maybe Viagra?

Come on, I can picture you all falling out of your computer chairs laughing!