Diagnosing an old 8mm camcorder

[PaulJBis]

Hi all:

Sorry, this is kinda offtopic, but I don't really know many other forums where there might be knowledgeable people about this problem...

The other day I "unburied" an old analog Sony CCD-V90E 8mm camcorder, partly to see if it still worked, partly to digitalize some of the old 8mm tapes (it hadn't been used in about 14 years). It still did, but the problem was that, when playing the tapes, the image didn't remain stable: it just kept jumping up and down, at least when viewed through the viewfinder. When I connected it to the TV it was even worse: sometimes the image didn't appear at all, as if the signal was so bad that it couldn't be played, and sometimes it appear with a huge white band in the lower part of the screen.

So my questions are: is this a problem with the heads of the camcorder or with the tapes? I figure that both might have decayed through time, but I don't have access to another 8mm camcorder/VCR to test it; which one is more likely? If it's the heads, would it be enough to clean them? And if so, how? (Soft cotton and ether, from what I've read in other sources, but I dont' know if I trust them).

(About the tapes: they have been stored in a plastic bag deep inside a closet, with no sunlight or big temperature changes AFAIK).

[olyteddy]

Well last I looked, they are still making 8MM tapes, so...Get a new tape, record a bit and see if it plays back. That should allow you to tell if it's the camera or the tape.

PS don't use ether. Too flammable and could dissolve parts of your camera. 99% Isopropanol (Isopropyl Alcohol) would be my choice.

[PaulJBis]

Thanks for your reply. I did what you mentioned (should have thought of it myself)... and it's the camera. So the question now is: how to fix it? Based on what I described, is it just a matter of the heads being dirty, or could there be something more to it? (Heads being badly aligned, or something).

[jggimi]

Dirty is easier to fix than alignment. I used to manually clean flying heads; the key to not damaging them is to roll the swab over the head in the direction of their travel in the cylinder. If you're uncomfortable doing this work -- and in a camcorder, there's not a lot of room to work -- you could try a so-called "cleaning casette" -- or find someone locally who does vcr/camcorder repair.