Hi welcome to Tear down! Tuesday Now I've been doing this blog for what three and a half years now and being the engineer that I am I'm a natural tight ass so I naturally skip on my video gear I get the camera. That's well, just good enough to get the job done Us: Engineers We can get by on pretty much anything but well now I'm a video blogging professional and I need serious professional video gear to do this job to be in the business. So decided bugger it. I'm going to mortgage the house, spare no expense and invest in the latest technology video camera money can buy.

and here it is. Check it out. The Sony Video 8. Look at this viewfinder.

Oh man, this does this look professional or what? I'm now fully equipped for practically anything. 230 lines of stunning analog resolution. It's got autofocus can you believe it? so you can expect first class stunning quality from the video blog from now on with this puppy could do almost anything. And yes, I'm available for hire.

I'll blog weddings BM mitzvas Anything so love this Beast is worth an absolute Fortune Yes I'm willing to sacrifice it to do a complete tear down here on the Eev blog. Be a world first. let's go Well folks, it would have been state of-the-art in 1985. Yes, that's 85.

that's 27 years ago. The same year Back to the Future came out and this is the Sony uh CCD V8 AF Now this is the autofocus model It uh came out shortly before this one with with a manual uh Focus model only, but that didn't last long and that one's quite rare apparently. Um, it's got a 250k CCD uh image sensor in it. It's got autof Focus That's probably the autofocus sensor up there.

It's got build-in boom mic and of course these cameras back in the day. No such thing as an LCD You got a little CRT viewfinder like that. So you've seen people walking around with these things on their shoulders. You old, uh, you know, news footage and old, you know, home videos and stuff like that.

So this was a pretty much state-ofthe-art in 1985 and it is a world first to support that analog format. Video 8. That's not the more recent, uh, digital versions. This is the analog format.

and well, it's going to be interesting to see what's in a 1985 vintage camcorder. And as for the physical design of this thing, you can see the physical hand strap here with the record start stop button. On top of that there is the zoom in, zoom out button. It's got a Time six uh lens on it and the battery.

This is the battery compartment as well. So the battery goes in here and it's got a little bit of uh, padding on this side here because this sits up against your face and while you're looking at the viewfinder in there, it's an absolute classic. The viewfinder flips in and out, so whether or not you want to use it, you can just whack it out of the way there. And it does seem to have like a separate power system.

There's a camera power switch here just for the Uh, just for the camera power itself as you can see and it's got white balance controls Focus controls and uh, backlight and a record preview button. And there's the Uh Zoom control. It does actually have a built-in motor to it so that will actually turn when you hit the zoom button up on top here. And then we've got our Uh Focus system from uh short I don't think it's got no macro mode or anything like that and uh, it I Think: don't think it focuses on anything under 3T or something like that.

So it's uh, very, very limited and that's presumably to do with the autofocus system which I heard worked um, fairly horribly or didn't actually work at all. so you can actually flip it through the manual focus and use that. So the VTR itself also has its own power. VTR Video Tape Recorder Power: There's separate eject and separate play review and all that and a tape counter on here.

standard play mode or longplay mode for lower quality. I Guess if you you know if you didn't need your full 320 or is it 240 lines of resolution or something, it's pretty horrid. Anyway, Um, it doesn't appear to work I can't actually get anything up on the uh CRT uh screen up here and the Uh tape just automatically ejects uh, back out whenever I put it in. So it seems to have a few issues, but it's a great candidate for a tear down.

And it's rather interesting just to compare the size and the form factor of these classic shoulder mount camcord to a recent full HD Uh Canon HFM 400 camcorder Here, there's just you know, there's no contest at all. the technology is just phenomenal and is we're talking 240 lines of resolution as opposed to full HD You know, 1920 by 1080? That's just. ah man. Unbelievable progress.

And on the bottom of the unit here we got a standard Uh tripod mount and there's a sliding door here which has an what do they call it a uh a multic connector interface and it came with this um audio input and output plus an RF modulator which just uh has a matching connector and that just plugs into the bottom like that. Woohoo! Stunning! 240 line quality composite in and out with RF modulator. Oh, can't beat it and also comes with a battery release mechanism like this and this is actually not a battery. this is a charger for it.

This is the actual charger which then plugs into the mains of course, 240 and that's how you actually power the thing up. go figure. and we'll obviously have to do the viewfinder separately cuz it just unplugs here with this connector and you can just slide that off so we'll have a look at that uh uh viewfinder later. So that should be interesting in its own right.

But let's and the mik, let's have a look at this actually. Mike just sort of unscrews there and pulls out and on the end of that look at that. We got some uh TRS Jacks So you know what we say here on the Eev blog? don't turn it on. Take it apart.

We immediately come to an interesting thing in here, which I believe is the autofocus sensor. I'm not 100% sure, but I can't think of anything else that would be in there and it's got a couple of Springs and it's got a little. It's got a little lens mechanism on the front, then it goes into this uh sensor device here. your guess is as good as mine, how that works and a couple of looks like it's gunked down.

Looks like there's a bit of Gunk on these screws down in here and there's some Springs in there as well, some oldfashioned autofocus system maybe that's the thing that didn't work very well at all. and I've taken the cover off the tape transport mechanism here and you can see down into it. It looks like any classic sort of uh VCR video cassette recorder. We can see the drum down in there and all the various uh Parts aspects you would expect in a typical uh VCR you've seen me do a little mini tear down of a VCR before and well, very similar except this is not a VHS system, it is the video 8.

System I've taken the screws off this top bit and it looks like it's just going to yeah, it's just going to pop out. We've got something up that's for the mic, that's for the microphone. so oh yeah, that is a connector in there. We'll disconnect that.

There we go. Bang we're in. so there's a little mik uh, preamp down in there. By the looks of it, a fancy surface mount.

W Not bad for 1985. so let's we got a big metal shielded can something rather in there. more surface mount ha. Advanced stuff and it looks like this uh side panel is just going to pop out here if I take another screw out found in here and these things are very should be very repairable actually in the scheme of uh things compared to modern modern uh camcorders.

Anyways, if I pop the bottom off here Tada look at that then we should be able to pop off these side panels. In theory, unless not, there's another screw down in there. So let's just undo this puppy and that should give us the entire side panel I Think these control should. Yeah, they're going to pop out too Taada and let's have a look.

Aha here we go look at that Bingo we're in. Oh and let's pop this side out. Oh, here we go. Now it's all now.

It's all full into bits. It's oops. Okay, there we go. We got our tape transport mechanisms all falling out of its own accord and uh, it's really starting to look like a bit of a mess.

Woo, look at that. And even in 1985, they had software bugs, so it really is quite messy. Now our entire tape transport mechanism. They really liked their uh shield in around the outside there I guess they deemed that was necessary.

So, but the thing is, it really is quite modular. That is the entire tape transport mechanism. There's very little going across. We've got a tiny little wiring harness, a little bit of uh, video stuff happening there, but apart from that, they are entirely separate mechanism.

which makes sense considering that they had. Power Systems you could switch the camera on. Seems that you could switch the camera on separately to the uh VTR uh tape recorder system. so that's just a little interface Jack for the viewfinder.

So if we separate these, um, there's not much to it at all. Here is the uh, just the charger system. It's got It's fused down in there. Nothing terribly exciting.

the contacts, nothing exciting. We've got a switch here. I'm not actually sure what that switch did I Don't have access to the manual for this thing or anything, but let's disconnect all this and try and get further. and as you can see, there is very little joining the two.

really. this is the Uh control board for the uh, white balance and the Uh, the controls for the camera head which is over here and then the recorder over here. It's just got these couple of little wiring harnesses. There's a couple of little mini coaxes in there so they're obviously uh, video and a few miscellaneous control signals, but that is about it.

They had separate power going to both modules from the Uh battery connector, but that's that's about it. So very, very modular and they're grounding the two systems as well. There's this ground lead here which then pops over through there and over to thep topper here, which joins the grounds between the two systems. so we should be able to pop those out and pop up this little wiring harness here so there's not too much to it.

There's these two connectors and that's about all she wrote and they even thoughtfully provide a little bullet connector here. once you get these two off little bullet connector to disconnect the ground between the two. Maybe that's some sort of uh, servicing thing or something because we've got the ground, we've still got this ground strap here. I mean presumably this is another ground signal I think I haven't traced it out yet, but they've deliberately they've gone to the trouble to heat shrink that and uh, put that in there.

so maybe it just allows you to disconnect um, a a ground Some sort of ground for Diagnostic or servicing purposes. Perhaps because these things would have been designed with Uh Services servicing in mind. I Mean you know in 1985, we hadn't entered the uh, disposable Electronics era at all. So these things were designed to be serviceable.

And as for the video, head here. It looks like all these custom Plastics just sort of pull out of there like that. Quite a complex system design. I Mean when you've got a designer, imagine designing this thing and you know they would have designed this in 1983 1984, You know, and you've got to mold all these.

Do all these molded? Plastics I mean what sort of computerated design did they have back then? Buger? all really? I mean not much, but they had to mold that to go all the way over that. and uh oh, there we go. Check this out. This is interesting.

Look at this. and yeah, this is clearly the autofocus mechanism up here because it can control see that little spring and that rod in there. It actually, when you rotate the focus on the camera here, that rod in there goes up and down. You see a spring down in there and you can see the autofocus sensor in there.

We've got the lens and it's just like a, you know, some sort of uh, two pin, um, you know, photo transistor kind of. you know, photo diode kind of thing. and it's physically moves it up, physically moves that up, the position of that thing, up and down with inside, the focal distance of this fixed lens in here. And if we have a look at the largest board on the bottom of the tape transport mechanism here, it's absolutely classic80s sort of.

uh, you know. Japanese Consumer equipment Uh, Design Within terms of the uh, taped artwork uh, track layout and you know the construction of the surface mount devices and you can see that they're using a delay line here. um, an analog delay line. I'm not sure what they've got a delay line in there for.

If anyone's familiar with uh, video8, uh, recording mechanisms and stuff like that, you may know what that thing's used for. If so, leave it in the comments. I Mean, check that out. It's just classic construction quality of the time and you can see those red marks under the components are the glue to hold them in place while they very shoddily solder the things in place.

They certainly hadn't Um, uh, you know, perfected the uh, pick and place machines and Reflow soldering that they have these days. It's a totally different era in indeed. And uh, look up here. I mean you know they couldn't even get the solder mask between the pins on that thing.

so on that chip there, so they had to leave all the solder mask off. You can see the flux residue still on there and it's just yeah. that's pretty horrible stuff, but it worked. No wonder this thing failed.

It says Made in Japan what are you talking about Doc: All the best stuff's made in Japan Well, this tape transport mechanism is Absolut Chalker block with electronics. We got a board here on the side. We got another one on the back which has uh shielding and all the adjustment uh, pots down through there. So that's sort of like all the uh, analogy type recording stuff.

We got the main board on the bottom here. there's another board right down in there under that. Then we've got, well, there's another board over here with a super cap on it. and then we have the uh, microcontroller board for the front panel and the tape counter mechanism, and uh, all of the controls which was, you know, really fancy pancy for the day and uh, and there's another little tiny board whacked down in there.

And this is really advanced stuff. I mean how many engineering hours went into this thing in terms of just system engineering this and how many Engineers worked on it? A a phenomenal amount I'm sure and just out of curiosity, got it completely disconnected to the uh, uh, to the video head of course. and we've just got the power coming directly in here and it should operate as a complete independent mechanism. So let's turn on The VTR power.

Tada There it is. and maybe if we eject. hey, there we go. look at that.

So let's whack our tape in there and see what happens. So here we go. It came with a BASF uh, 90minut uh video 8 tape premium high grade made in Germany Hi to war my German viewers. Fantastic! So let's whack this thing in here because this thing wasn't ejecting before as the full thing, it was sort of just, uh, sort of getting stuck.

So let's whack it in there and boom. The tape transport mechanism goes around and that seems to be working. It didn't do that before it wasn't It was automatically ejecting the tape and so there was some sort of sensor thing stopping it doing that. So now I should be able to, uh, fast forward this.

Yep, now it's decided it's going to work. Woohoo! Look at that. Should be able to get the video out of this thing. So if you haven't seen a video8 tape transport mechanism work before, here we go: I Put it in and you'll notice.

You know, once it it flips down in there, it'll automatically. Uh, open up this flap on here and pull the tape out, wrap it right around the head there the drum and watch it. There it is. There's the tape bang, pulls it around, rotates, boom.

Very complicated little mechanism. but I love it and we'll stop it And let's eject it and watch it come out it. Returns the tape back to its position and boom I Love it. Great stuff and there you go.

I Hooked it up and we are getting a video. A really very awful video signal. Out of this, it looks like it is somebody playing golf on this thing. I'm not kidding.

It is. Uh, let's rewind it here. It was better at the start. So I've got no idea if you know you have to hook up the control signals between the two I doubt it.

but it does seem to be generating at least a video signal on one of the connectors here and you can see clearly there's somebody playing golf there. There we go, it's it's pretty horrible. So I'm not sure why it's horrible like that, but they're lining up for their swing and there they go. Woohoo! But I just got that from just, uh, probing one of the coaxes on here like this and using one of these.

Car rear Vision uh monitor things. You know it just takes composite video input. It's pretty crusty, but uh, we certainly can pick out that video there. It's actually not bad now.

It seems to have, uh, seems to have settled in reasonably well. There, you know it's It's certainly not first class video, but you can make that out I wonder who that is could be an early Tiger Woods Nah. And if you look down in there, you can see the little photo transistor photo diode combination which matches up with this hole on the bottom of the cassette here that goes into there and that's what looks like. It detects that there's a tape hooked in.

Look at that. So there we go. that's you. just noticed it.

Go there and it pops out. So if we push this mechanism down, it does absolutely nothing. CU It doesn't know there's a cassette in there and and we put our fingers over that. Boom.

There we go. And for those who want a closeup action of the video8 head spin in here we go. Woohoo! And if we undo this little latch on here, we just pull it off and it latches off. Then we've got this rather unique I Haven't actually seen these before, but I don't Service A lot of you know consumer gear like this.

but that's actually a hinged right angled board to board interconnect connector. Check that out. I Mean it's actually got a hinge mechanism in there. You can see it there, it is down in there and the these are solded in connectors.

they're right angle and they just unfold like that for servicing. I mean I can't disconnect that board. I Would have to actually unsolder all the connections on one side or one of the boards here here, but that's a really neat. That's a really neat mechanism to get in there and service that.

It's absolutely brilliant. And check this out. We've got like a classic bodged connector on there. You can see the resistor, the surface mount resistor underneath that there and they've just gone.

Oh bugger that, we'll just whack that in there, bung it in. couldn't bother, couldn't be bothered doing a respin' on that. and uh, it's you know, really. is is quite classic, sort of 80s consumer gear construction.

I Really love it. There's the main processor it's an NEC 753, and couple of miscellaneous support circuits. There's you know, lots of custom. There's going to be a lot of custom Sony stuff on this Sony did a lot of their own.

uh, either a lot of their own chips or they've rebranded them. um Sony so you know, Classic 406 69 on there. What else have we got I don't know. it doesn't matter.

I'm not going to go into a circuit breakdown of this thing I'm more interested in the just the physical construction side of things. You can see all the adjustment pots on this thing. I Mean, there's still adjustment? There's uh, cap? what is it? LP low pass adjust and stuff like that. There's all sorts of various uh adjustments where you got to get a little tiny jeel screwdriver through some of these holes.

They really are quite tiny and that can in there looks like it's the DC motor which drives the tape transport mechanism and this board. down the bottom is the DC input board. That's the board. I was actually powering the thing from there and you can see it's got a 02 Farad uh, super cap on there.

We've got looks like a uh, a power transistor there and a couple of miscellaneous parts that's just providing power to the whole thing. We've got uh, some sort of shielded can up here, which is the video? some sort of video uh, amp or something like that because it has the wiring harness with the video out coming out of it. So uh, that's and of course there's another double sided shielded can on here, front and back of the board with various adjustment pots. so that' be various biased adjustment things for the for the Uh video head and stuff like that I would presume.

and who knows what? this board over here I mean it's a CX you know 20114 who knows? Not going to bother Googling it. but uh, it's You know. there's a couple of other Sony CX Parts on there as well. I presume they're Sony and I Guess you could get the full service manual for this thing too.

which if you want to go into it. hey, we do have a label though we do have there it is Comb filter. So we got our comb filter down there. got our Y process so they do it.

Looks like they have labeled the modules here so that's our comb filter. our Y process. What's that? Top one? I can't see any label. that's the C process section timing control circuitry so they have modularized this quite nicely and actually labeled the silk screen I Rather like that, we've got another hinged board here.

This is, uh, part of the uh, the audio stuff. it's saying audio on the back and another Sony uh branded CX part it's a 237 and I love these hinge boards. ah thing of beauty, a joy forever. So that's the tape transport mechanism which uh, still works intact I I Love that brilliant design and uh, but I expected a lot more uh through hole, uh circuitry on there.

but I guess this is uh, you know to get these things uh down to the side of what was these shoulder camcorders are back in the early 80s. I You know they had to go predominantly surface mount and unfortunately it looks like the same trick doesn't seem to work for the video head itself and the viewfinder I can't seem to uh Power this thing up independently at all and uh, get an image out of it. Bummer. But anyway, um, even before I took this thing apart I was getting like just a blank screen on the viewfinder, it just didn't seem to be uh working at all.

and it looks like all of this top board in here is inside this. uh, metal shielded can so we'll have to just, uh, pop all this stuff up and open her up This video head is a rather complicated, a little beast to, uh, get apart. it's uh, all over the shop. lots of uh, ah man.

I'm really not being gentle with this at all, but there are lots of interconnected mechanical bits and it really is quite a pain in the ass. This looks like the video output amplifier fire or something like that, and it's its own little shielded can stuck down in the side of here. Real pain in the butt. Now that's Ah that's physically soldered down into there.

How annoying. G And I've got down to the point where the lens mechanism is attached to the back Electronics board presumably where the CCD sensor is uh mounted on the box in that can in there, you can see all these lovely adjustment pots on the side there. and uh, where're we're getting in there like you know, I can crack this thing. uh, open in terms of the shielding on it, but I'm not sure how that's actually held in place there.

I guess I got to lift the maybe. Oh yeah, here we go. The shielding sort of lifts out here. If I can get rid of this tape, here we go.

the 1980s vintage T Hey, there we go there we go. It is mounted yep, directly onto that board in there and this is our Focus motor here. If I turn that you can, you may not be able to see it. but there's a little.

you can see the pulley, the little belt in there going around for. So that's the Focus motor. and this motor down here is clearly the Zoom motor. I Mean you can do the manual zoom like that or it's the override there and you can see the see the Cog down in there.

That's the over. That's the motor override for the Uh manual or electronic zoom and that last little bastard of a shield down in there is connected through with ah, it's St the wire. There it is. Got it.

Shield Finally off the entire Electronics mechanism for the CCD camera. Sorry folks, it's 623 p.m. The wife just rung up to remind me that I have to get home in 5 minutes. So unfortunately, um, I might have to make a part two of this tear down.

It's probably already. uh, long enough. But there you go that is inside a classic uh, 1985 vintage 27 year old. actually the first Uh Video8 camcorders on the market.

If you want to discuss it, jump on over to the Eev blog forum and if you like Tay down Tuesday Please give it a big thumbs up. And if you want to complain about me having to go home early and not finish this tear down, send your letters in right in to she who must be obeyed at PO Box 7949 Borham Hills New South Wales 2153 Australia not Austria Catch you next time.