Failing elderly Sony 8mm camcorders

[pgoelz]

Just curious...... anyone else had their 8mm camcorder fail? We have two of about the same vintage but different models. Both are Sony from about 1990 or therabouts and both have what appear to be internal power supply / logic issues. One is totally non-functional.... it will load and eject OK but the head motor stutters and the viewfinder and camera sync are very messed up. The other works but intermittently has sync issues that result in intermittent bad tracking / loss of color / noise bursts. If it starts playing OK it will continue to the end of the tape.

The interesting part is that both emit a foul odor.... not really a burned electronics smell. More like a dead animal. I have smelled that odor twice before. Once was a dead mouse in the wall and once was a decomposing phenolic light socket. I'm wondering if this is something endemic to this vintage of Sony camcorder. And of course wondering what to steer clear of if I end up shopping for a replacement machine to finish my 8mm captures.

Paul

[handyguy]

Sony is famous for their cheap caps. Same thing with their older laptops.

[zoobie]

sounds/smells like a leaky capacitor
you could have it fixed or just pick up a gently used 8mm on eBay to finish your project

[pgoelz]

That's about what I figured. I am all too familiar with bad caps on a PC MB and that was my first suspicion for the camcorders. Depending on how many we're talking about, I can do it myself if they are accessible. Hopefully, the culprits are confined to the power supply area.

I think I'll open up the totally non-functional one and look. The other one is working at present and I'm capturing. But I imagine it is on borrowed time.

Paul

[zoobie]

I had one go bad in a Canon 8mm Hi8 once...the shop switched me out with a cam that had no audio...ha ha

[pgoelz]

Well, I opened the dysfunctional one and there are a bunch of 10uF 6V caps that look like they have at least one corroded pad and some have some gunk around the base. Trouble is that they are physically smaller than the ones I have ready access to and since I am not sure they are the only bad ones, I'm gonna have to think about whether or not it is worth trying to replace them.

I'm using the second one that works but is flakey. The more I use it the more the room stinks. It really does smell like a dead mouse (:

I think I'll cruise the Salvation Army and Goodwill stores around here and see what they have. Looks like $40 will get me something of the same vintage and therefore dubious condition on Ebay so I'd like to be able to sniff one first locally Since this is a one time thing and I only have about 8 tapes to capture, I don't want to spend a fortune.

Paul