Dragged home a Hitachi VT-33A

[jedo1507r]

I went to a flea market that I have never been before today and stumbled upon this bottom feeder Hitachi deck. Paid $5 for giggles and I happen to have spare belts from trashed modern recorders and old belts from cassette decks to get this up and running.

One weird quirk is that the machine fails to turn itself on unless it was unplugged for a few minutes, though I could set the clock and program the VCR with this problem. Any experience with this box or its more exciting siblings?