+pvc988 That can is quite distinctive. You'll see them, in a smaller low-profile TO-5 transistor can, used in decent 418/433MHz and up RF remote transmitters.
yep ! it's 38MHz IF filter and small black bloby thingie is 6.5 (5.5) MHz sound IF filter. and BTW antenna not going there it's going into metal can on the other side with coils in wax
the engineering on this thing in the later 80-90 is fucking incredible this is crazy crazy crazy complex and original for the time it really mind blowing
Even though products are vastly more complex/feature rich these days, it seems to me that engineering has gotten much easier. Rather than design from scratch a mechanical tape drive to fit the space, you can just use off the shelf components to interface with solid state storage. A modern smartphone has all the capability of this device and more, but it seems to me that the actual design of the product is much easier. Plus, CAD tools are so much better, it's staggering they were able to design the product at all, much less make it manufacturable.
It's all in the execution, how they were able to do so much in the pure analog domain is perplexing. The timing of the heads, delay lines, tracking, the mechanical aspect and how it recreates the analog video signal with the precise timing for the TV its being played on.
Great video! You should pull out the video head drum assembly and tear it down, as well. Contains a 3 phase brushless motor with several hall effect sensors and pulse generators for servo feedback, and a multiple winding rotary RF transformer to get the signals to and from the rotating video heads. Plus a bunch of high precision bearings and machined parts.
My parents were either sales-man suckers, dyslexic or cheapskates coz we had a fuckn SANYO BETA VCR and they bought me and my sister SANYO Walkperson Portable Cassette Players. Fuck you Sanyo for tricking so many 80's parents into buying your half baked shit.
+Lachlant1984 Haha, But it wasn't a "Walkman" branding.. That was the thing that counted as a teenager, the name. These days the Walkman name would be banned for being un-PC, in that not all people can walk and not all people have a male gender, and people including straight males would insist they weren't a man lost to be awkward.
My parents were and are cool as, they got tricked by brand name fuckery, like every dope who buys a Palsonic or Suny TV from K-Mart these days, it's just cheap shitty knockoffs of the better quality product.
Gotta love the Sony screw arrows. I recently replaced the belt on an old Sony linear turntable, and thanks to those arrows, I didn't have to guess which screws to remove to just open the case.
I feel old now Dave - when you were explaining the tape path and head I was thinking 'everyone's pulls dozens of these apart Dave, no need to explain it' then I realised that maybe the current generation of hobbyists would probably not have done this like some of us used to. :). Another great tear down.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane! As a broadcast maintenance engineer, I've worked on almost every videotape format from 2 inch quad to HDCAM-SR (Sony HD production format). This was an engineering feat, but it was an incremental one. There were two generations of helical cassette tape before this. Umatic used 3/4 inch tape and VHS/Beta used 1/2 inch tape.
I bought a similar one in high school to take on a choir trip (think it was a GV8...maybe). Had it for a few years but never really used it much. No idea what happened to it. I had a case that held 6 'AA' batteries to power the unit. I'm thinking it was around $850??? About the same price as the Sony MZ-1 Minidisc recorder that came out a few years later. Had to have that too. Loved that thing. Got more use out of that than any video walkman or cd player I had at the time.
Definitely a SAW filter. ;) html.alldatasheet.com/html-pdf/411398/PETERMANN/F1034/484/1/F1034.html Those big round TO-8 packages were quite common on SAW filters in VCRs and TVs in the 80s / 90s.
What's incredible to think is that stuff did not really get simpler, just more compact and integrated. A lot of that circuitry can now fit into more purpose built ICs and take up less space. Incredible really. We went from big vacuum tubes based devices to this, to even smaller.
Oh, and Dave...stop collapsing an antenna like that. You're supposed to push it in from the bottom, not push it down from the top. That's how antennas break.
Nice teardown Dave! Sony electronics from the 80s & 90s always prove to be interesting. This is especially true of Betacam and Betacam Digital VCR decks. If you ever see one locally, it's well worth a pickup for teardown.
Are the fine tracking adjustment guide pegs loose? (The 2 moving ones with the screwdriver slots on top.) This transport has a long history of the pegs coming loose and shifting up and down at will. Sometimes they even fell out completely and rattled around inside. I've repaired a lot of these things. This transport was used in every Sony 8mm product for several years plus Canon also bought Sony transports to use in their products as well.
I'm sure he might come up with a solid flight controller if he is getting into this level of enjoyment. You most likely know already, but SciShow Physics has a great set of videos on PID that might be helpful for him.
Haven't seen SciShow Physics but will check it out for sure. He love PID tuning so much! He has his own set of theories as to how it should be tackled. I like the fact that it's got him thinking about this sort of stuff
Hi Dave I know it’s been a few years but do you still have this video Walkman ? I recently purchased the same model in PAL too and after a recap it works great except for the lcd that works but it’s very dull and almost inverted picture Any ideas ?? I did change the lcd display but made no difference and the tuner board with same result The pal version is alit more rare than ntsc Thanks Mike
Oh, I remember when I was a kid, my dad had one of those, and I was sometimes allowed to watch something on it. It also had a big vertical bar across the screen, I think it was yellow or red, wandering from left to right, indicating the channel frequencies (if you notice the frequency scale above the screen), so it had a digital tuner and could even auto-search for a tv signal!
@4:28 AFAIK, NTSC never used delay lines. It didn't need them, since we didn't do the phase alternating on our color signals, thus we never had the problem with Hanover Bars (which is what the delay line is supposed to compensate for).
is that the thing you can use to "stabilize" out of spec video signal from old computers? makes is easy to grab the video that the grabber card dont liike.
I owned one! It was an xmas gift and I loved this thing! Like a quantum computer now back then. I made an extension cable for the screen and used it to watch movies in school! :D
Little know fact. For years and years the Sony Video8 recorders where the perfered "playback" device for major film shoots in the from of a a CCD tap off the view finder on the 35mm film camera). It was reliable, and just got stuck as "the standard". Many people in LA/Hollywood made their living operating them on set.
+GeorgeGraves - Yep, I remember spotting them all the time on the "behind the scenes" features on TV (ie. the "extended trailers" lol) I always wanted one of these mini players as a kid. Loved the design of the Sony ones with the built-in LCD as well. It would have been perfect for taking on camping trips / holidays, or to school back-in-the-day. ;)
Dave..You piss me on.I email you and want to ring you.But you didn't reply...I started with electronics with Colin Mitchell.. Just need some info if you don't mind..Idont have your number.So what is the best way to contact you.Thx mate.
Brings back memories... I had a Hi-8 version of this! It was a very significant improvement in video quality over the normal "Video-8" format. The Hi-8 model was used a lot in "intelligence gathering" situations... spy camera recording. (more...) Later, when D-8 (Digital-8mm) format became available, they had a D-8 Video Walkman... which replaced the Hi-8 version for spy activities. The D8 equipment was usually backwards "playback compatible" with the Hi-8, and even Video-8 formats. D8 was VERY high quality... for its day. I even used it a few times for TV broadcast work. I still have my old Sony Hi-8 CCD-TR700 and DCR-TRV510 D8 camcorders. I also used a Sony D8 computer tape backup drive for several years... I could even share tapes between the two devices... Video work or Data Backup. The holes in the bottom of the tapes determine not only Write-protection, but tape length and tape series as well... V8/Hi-8/D-8. BTW, that large round "can" in the Tuner is a SAW Filter... Surface Acoustic Wave Filter for those not familiar.
I never thought of it before but how do all the signals contact out of a rotating head like this? Is there just one tap at the top of the rotating head, that is the data out? There maybe has to be a supply voltage to the head board.
Another thing is that the helical scan rotating head uses small rotating transformers to transfer the video signal from the moving to the static part. Real nice piece of design.
I remember having to choose between VHSC and 8mm. We went for the VHSC because it was playback compatible with standard VHS. OH, glad to see you're back on your feet, so to speak (at least not int terrible pain).
Rest up well Dave! I always enjoy your videos and will wait patiently. Your health is quite important, and thanks for keeping us involved throughout the process. You rock!
There were similar units for mini-dv too. Used some times for filming with a hidden pinhole camera or filming action sports with a small camera on a helmer with a cable to the recording unit in a backpack or pocket. The Days before GoPro...
Hi Dave, portable DVD players came after this, Pioneer provided a couple of dozen to Eurostar for people to watch on the train to and from Paris and Brussels.
@ 16:48 : Sony was a big user of SAW filters in the ~45 MHz TV IF circuitry, since at least the late '70s, at least in miniaturized sets. Saved lots of time, parts and board space.
Amazing how they jigsaw-ed all that together with the limited CAD of the day. I can imagine many, many cabinets of engineering drawings and other docs.
The Virgin Atlantic comment made me think of the scene from the first Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movie, the scene from the plane the flight attendant asks Ethan if he wants to watch a movie, she has a big bin of tapes & next to Ethan's seat is something that I recall looking distinctly like this unit.
Hmm you didn't show that long canned bar thingy on the side of the LCD, that is connected with 3 wires to the board. My guess is that these are a bunch of buttons. Each one connected to a different resistor so you can decode the buttons usind an ADC. I have seen that in a Grundig TV once.
Had one of these in the day....... brilliant technology beautifully made, and $2,400 from memory. The battery lasted around 1 1/2 to 2 hours and it was followed up by a stereo version with a larger screen similarly priced. They were a flop in Australia - Everyone i showed it to (and that was many, I love show and tell) were amazed and had never seen anything like it before, It was about the only attempt at portable video until the rise of the personal DVD player - due mainly to the fact you could buy a reasonable used car for that at the time....
I worked with Sony's video recorders in the mid-90s to mid 00's building surveillance gear. Later stuff than this but a pretty good variety of this stuff and Panasonic's VHS stuff dovetailing into early digital and DVD recorders.
Great video. I love these 80's tek tear-downs. Technology in the 80's and 90's was exciting. Everything had tons of buttons and every button had a purpose. I lusted after one of these when they came out. Very expensive though. I think it was the portable DVD players that took over from these things.
Funny you mentioned Virgin Atlantic used these. I actually remember having to use one on a flight between LA and London in 1993 because my in-seat screen was dead. Worst flight ever, battery was terrible and flight attendants weren't interested in replacing it.
its a SAW Filter if memory serves me correct. SAW (surface acoustic wave) filters are electromechanical devices commonly used in radio frequency applications. Electrical signals are converted to a mechanical wave in a device constructed of a piezoelectric crystal or ceramic; this wave is delayed as it propagates across the device, before being converted back to an electrical signal by further electrodes. The delayed outputs are recombined to produce a direct analog implementation of a finite impulse response filter. This hybrid filtering technique is also found in an analog sampled filter. SAW filters are limited to frequencies up to 3 GHz. The filters were developed by Professor Ted Paige and others.[3]
Use to get that with tapes on 1st class flight in the old days, had tape wrap up on the head 3 times on one flight until the run out and I had to pick new film
I knew I had one of these GV - 9, just found it in stored away box. I have over 200 Super 8 MM movies that I intended to watch on this. Found a Super 8mm VCR playback after the GV-9, so this one is like new. Amazing fun ahead.
Ohhhhh man when I clapped my eyes on one of these back in the day I was in AGONY!!!! I was in love and I wanted one like AAAAARRRRGGHHHHH!!!!!! Sadly couldn't afford one but what an object of desire. Beautiful!
This device is absolutely incredible. I love this type of AV equipment. I wish I had a working one now. I love having all those video in and out options on analog. Everything is on lockdown these days. How in the hell was stuff like this designed? I can't imagine they had CAD software yet. Seems like a bunch of late nights. As for the product following this one, I bet it was a Japan-only minidisc affair. Great video, Dave!
Great video! I have the stereo version and I used to use it for audio only... as an audio walkman! Sound quality was really good and it even had index search that could be controlled from a backpack with a remote if I remember right. I jammed a much larger battery onto it also. Got it used with a dead pixel but it still cost me everything I had as a teenager; Guess I really hated audio cassette sound! Video walkman sounded almost as good as a CD, of course this is analog FM helical audio. Sadly the outer surface of the case turned to some kind of urethane goo- it's a real mess.
Remember working with one, was a Hi-8 version for a job I did in late 2002 and had to feed an Elmo/Sanyo miniature camera into it. Was a pretty amazing little deck I thought and a beautiful design. Remember it was expensive over £2K UK at the time, I nearly bought one for work use as a small portable recorder however was worried how long it'd last? Plus servicing would never be easy or cheap and you can see why. A marvel of Sony design though.
my dad have said that these auto clean of the head was one of the best things that happened for him the time he worked fixing vhs, these things aways mess the head and they clean them to wait for the guy come back a few mounths later to clean again
Usually there is 3 dc motors in a tape mechanism, a dc brushless motor as the filter thing with the tape film rapped around it, another dc brushless motor as the thing that makes the tape wheels turn making the tape film go from one side to another, and a dc brushed motor making the arms that pull the tape film to the filter motor thing move. take apart a modern VCR tape player with the large tapes and you will find this motor set up. Usually the filter motor thing will have 2 holes on the side instead of 4. This is my moms account I am using.
As I recall Sony replaced this model with the GV-200 and GV-300. The GV-300 added stereo to both the TV tuner and also to the tape! Not only that it would also record in stereo as well. But these have a serious problem with bad capacitors and many of them can be found either dead or with greatly reduced functionality.
I wonder how many of those parts and subassemblies were reused or adapted from/to other portable gear. Such as camcorders with the tape mechanism in the camera, small CRT TVs with the tuner jammed in to a corner behind the CRT, Betamax VCRs etc.
Hi Dave thanks for this and all the great vids --- gonna crack the minidisc player open soon? Expecting it to be very fiddly. Looking forward to that one :D
Hi dave. I love your videos, especialy your repair videos. I always learn a lot from them, even If you dont actually repair the product in the end. I would like to see another video on the HP DSA35670A. And what about the Tektronix 2465B from video 695?
I was just wondering, what happens to the items you teardown after you're done making the video? I'm hoping they get put back together and not thrown in the bin.
RF tuning circuits are like works of black art..2 loops of copper, random space, 2 loops and end jotting out in some odd angle that would take a supercomputer to solve that equation but is done by a medium level factory worker, several units per hour.
I remember see this device on display in 1990. Over AU$2000 (probably $4k in today's money). I was astonished by this device and desperately wanted to have one at the time.
The metal can @ 16:40 looks an awful lot like a Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) filter. Hence the component designation SWF101. If you manage to get a repair manual for this, I'm pretty sure the internals of those chips will be explained, engineers ran product development at Sony back then, and they REALLY knew how to put service guides together. Amazing manuals, nothing quite like them, the absolute dog's danglies.
+Gerald Musy I was going to add disposable buy you did. Now days if you buy an electronic device they include a slip of paper state not to return it to the store,instead they send you a replacement and tell you to throw out the bad unit. They dont even want it back. I had one place ask me to cut the cord at the source and mail that in to prove I did ( I think they measured the length of the cord to make sure you cut it right). Then they sent a refund stating they didnt want the whole unit. It was a recalled item. I took the back off,added a fuseable link ,soldered in a new cord and used the damn thing for three years before it finally actually failed.
I'm not sure where in the world you are, but in the EU since 2002 (extended in 2005) the WEEE regulations impose a responsibility on the manufacturer to have to take back the equipment at the end of it's life, and dispose of it responsibly.
You must get a DigiBeta to tear down, same mechanical tech with helical scan but all 1's and 0's. They are quite simply an engineering work of art inside. It was probably also the height of Sony tape tech before solid state memory took over.
I loved that technology back then. Funny as I sit here and watch this on a device that is flat and takes up hardly any room. just amazing. What went into those was nothing short of pure awesome. What would you say is the most important thing that changed technology from then to what we use today?
The video walkman was around for quite a while, into the 2000s at least. Formats supported included Video 8, Hi-8, Digital-8, MiniDV (Standard and DVCAM) as well as HDV (High Definition). The tuners went from what you see there, to Cable ready to external sidecar and later no longer an option and it appears the later versions of these machines were designed to be used by professionals and even used, the HDV versions run over $500 one eBay. Many companies have tried to use camcorder formats in home or portable VCRs. Radioshack: Video 8 in a 5 inch color tv portable Sony: Video 8 Home VCRs, Hi8 Home VCRs, MiniDV Home VCRs (all with tuner), the video walkman as well. JVC: Combined MiniDV/S-VHS home VCRs. There are probably more examples out there
Definitely in the professional broadcast market, but they were completely different designs. Most of the broadcast equipment I've repaired in the past used separate boards that contained things like TBC, inputs, video processing, displays, transport, etc. One of the other differences was the interface. Consumer gear used RCA jacks while broadcast used BNC. Still surprised at the HDMI adoption in the marketplace. HD-SDI would have been a much better standard. It's better anyway.
Do a minidisc walkman teardown. It always amazed me that it's possible to run it from only one AA battery for such a long period! What's inside that makes it that efficient?
Nice little device! :D That curiously confounding metal can you found is a SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave) filter. It's like your glass delay line, but for RF. Proper voodoo :P The head cleaner roller near the start looks a bit how you doin', as you say :P but it is meant to move in and out in odd steps like that. No idea why! It's to do with the way the main cam gear is designed. On front loading VCRs that one cam gear will be a single motor which draws the cassette into the machine, lifts the flap on the cassette box, drops the box down onto the mechanism, then unfurls the tape. It's beautiful to see! I recently took apart an older (nineties vintage) VCR I bought from a charity shop for ten English bucks. Had several hours of fun pulling that apart and playing with the bits. Much more complex transport mechanism than you'd get in today's machines!
