Phil Marlowe wrote in a message to Mike Ross:

> I use the sensitive tuner in an older broken vcr (never throw those 
> out as they had the best tuners) which doesn't have a blue screen of 
> death (argh!).

PM>  [g]

PM> Good tip, that. The newer ones are duds in that department. And I 
PM> think I have one of those old ones around here somewhere.

I have more than one,  and am wondering how much of a hassle it would be to
figure out what was what with it...

PM> And I think it was Roy who mentioned a VCR repair kit for $20 [?] 
PM> that I meant to ask him about but never got around to. Am in 
PM> catch-up mode and am so strapped for time lately that I've had to 
PM> abandon various projects.

That was a power supply repair kit.  The one older VCR we have here has a
small switching power supply,  and when we got this home entertainment
center furniture (nothing special),  there's a hole in the back for the
wires to come out,  only reconnecting it did *not* bring it back to life. 
A little checking turned up a blown fuse and a switching transistor that
was a dead short.  Replacing these got the same result,  so I got the kit. 
The kit replaced diodes,  a number of different capacitors,  and I forget
what else,  in addition to the transistor.  Some of those parts were no
doubt contributing factors to the thing's demise,  in particular I heard in
here that manufacturers are making do with lower temperature-rated caps
than are good, and I think the kit had those in there.  Anyhow,  when I
plugged it back in I got a clock display right off,  and it's been working
fine ever since.  That was 4-5 years ago.  Not bad when you consider we
bought the thing used for $50 in the first place.  

Did you want me to dig out the info in the company?

 PM>  Someone else pointed out another use for old VCRs  -- that you 
 PM> can dub video tapes with two old VCRs,  something you supposedly 
 PM> can't do with newer models.

The two we have here being in different rooms,  that's actually something I
haven't tried yet.  And the junkers sitting in storage don't work,  and are
good for parts only...

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