Sunday - September 2, 2006 . Added two more cameras to the museum pages today. A [Shibaden FP-1500U] single tube color studio camera with CCU and a [Sony AVC-4600] BW studio camera with CCU. Both also have the usually missing camera CCU interconnecting cables. . This week, my great friend and French video equipment collecting counterpart, Bruno Merlier was in my area on vacation. Bruno and friend traveled across the USA by automobile, starting in New York and ending in San Jose California. While here, we toured the silicon valley, took in the sights and, of course, the Labguy Collection. Bruno is the web master of [Passions Incongrues], the French equivalent of Labguy's World. It was the best week for Labguy, this year. Have a safe trip home, Bruno! Sunday - August 27, 2006 . Added two more video cameras to the museum pages today. The first is a very rare Nivico TK-77, also known as a [Vidica 77]. The second one is a rare [Akai VC-1A] vidicon camera. Both are boxy old fashioned stand alone video cameras that could be used for either video tape recording or video surveillance work. Both are from the mid to late 1960s. Check them out and enjoy! Sunday - August 12, 2006 . Added yet another VTR to the collection this weekend. Thanks to a fortuitous visit to my local electronics flea market yesterday, I was directed to the purchase of two [Ampex VPR-20] portable one inch type C format VTRs. One complete unit and one parts donor unit. A little off topic, since this type of video tape recorder does not qualify as a potential home machine. But I suppose there is more than one maniac who has used these for that purpose. (Why is everyone looking at me?) Enjoy the latest expression of my obsessive compulsive collecting disorder! Saturday - August 12, 2006 . So, what are the odds? I just obtained a rare Westel coniscan format gun camera recorder. Today at the DeAnza College ham radio swap meet, I obtained another VTR that is in many ways identical to the Westel machine but is really different. Both machines are coniscan format. The new on is a [Precision Echo 521] airborne video tape recorder. Very similar to the [Westel Company WR-201] Airborne video tape recorder I just posted two days ago! I had seen virtually no info on these machines for decades, and then I get two machines from separate sources on a couple of days apart. Amazing! . Coming Soon! Two Ampex VPR-20s. Woo hoo! Wednesday - August 10, 2006 . Added yet another video recorder to ever growing collection. This one is a gun camera recorder from some sort of US fighter aircraft of the late 60s. A rare [Westel Company WR-201] Airborne video tape recorder conforming to the mythical coniscan format. Many of you probably saw this thing turn up on Ebay several times in the past year. I finally broke down and bought the darn thing. It is rusty crusty condition, but looks good otherwise. Monday - August 07, 2006 . Had a Javelin XL-5000 sitting on the porch for several weeks now. Finally got to unpacking this VTR tonight. The Javelin XL-5000 is actually a Sanyo VTR-1360. See it here: [Javelin XL-5000]. Sunday - August 06, 2006 . Finally! Some updates. A friend recently pined to see Labguy's World updates while he traveled around the world on business. Well, here you go! Two new additions. A Bell & Howell one inch IVC compatible VTR and an RCA one inch type C portable production recorder. An Echo Science one inch gun camera recorder is coming in the very near future as well. [Bell & Howell 2920] [RCA TH-50A] . Not to be forgotten, some old cameras as well. A rare JVC/Nivico Vidika 77 vidicon camera and an Akai VC-1 vidicon camera that was the recommended mate to the VTR-700 and X-500 (Roberts 1000). Stay tuned for those. . In other news, Labguy found full time work finally. Working as a lab technician at a large IC manufacturer in Silicon Valley. Pay is good, benefits rock, no debts and no worries. Life can't get any better. . Last, but not least, I am opening a new category of collecting. [Picture phones and video phones]. I just obtained an ultra rare, brand new in the box, Western Electric Picturephone, Mod II, from 1973. Also in the collection, Mitsubishi Luma phones and AT&T 2500 full motion color video phones. All of these units are operational! (I presume the Ma Bell unit will fire right up when I get tech spec's to do just that) This page is still under construction, so bare with me. Thursday - May 11, 2006 . Adding a nice VTR to the collection this evening. A very rare [Toshiba GV-212] EIAJ VTR. I am not certain if it is a color machine or not. Will not know until it arrives. "The deck is in the mail." Extremely similar to the [Ampex VR-420]. In Fact Toshiba made the VR-420 for Ampex to compliment the Instavision portable VTR they were co-developing at the time. What a great find! Got it for virtually nothing thanks to Ebay. And thanks to the potential bidders who did not respond to this wonderful find. . I also know someone selling a PAL VPR-5 system. Contact me [via email] if you are interested. Includes a load of accessories. Item is located in Europe. This item will most likely go quickly! Don't wait! Thursday - May 06, 2006 . Started a new page on the subject of replacement rubber wheels and belts for the old VTRs covered on these pages. This new page has not yet reached a satisfying conclusion. It will require input from you, the site visitors, to get there. I need your input, especially on the subject of successfully finding replacement parts for these old beasts. [NEW FAQ PAGE] Thursday - April 06, 2006 . There is good news and bad news at Labguy's World tonight. . I picked up the two "new" old VTRs last evening in San Bruno, just a few miles south of San Francisco. Loaded them up in the Geo Metro and hauled them back to San Jose as fast as my little put-put would go. The VTRs spent the night in the car. First thing this morning, I ruined future generations of little Labguys by grunting those monsters up the 15 or so steps into the house by myself. We live on hill. I learned just because it has a handle on top, doesn't mean it's portable! . The good news: The [Sony AV-5000A] works OK. It came up running, records and plays back. Some sticky tape issues popped up, but a dig through a pile of old tapes found a couple that would behave well enough for testing. Color reproduction quality is good but noisy and the luminance resolution is soft. Maybe 2.5 Mhz? The modulator / demodulator could use some tweaking as there was some over modulation type of black streaks on the right side of black to white transitions. No doubt a set of capacitors, a cleaning and alignment will do wonders for it. After more than 30 years, I finally have the working Sony AV-5000A I've always wanted. And I deserve it. . Now the bad news: The [Roberts 1000] went up in smoke while I was testing it. Not sure what cooked, but the smell of burning transformer or, more likely, AC motor was quite strong. It never produced a picture from the tapes I had on hand. The roasting components brought testing to an immediate halt. This also caused Labguy some temporary depression, but he's much better now. Will need to find a service manual for this one before I proceed. Darn, that beast is heavy. Approximately 75 pounds, it makes the AV-5000A seem down right portable at only 48 pounds! Tuesday - April 04, 2006
and alleged to be operational! What kind are they, Labguy? I'm glad you asked! One is a [Roberts 1000], fully operational and the other is a [Sony AV-5000A], also fully operational. Plus tapes and manuals. And all within driving distance for poor old Labguy too. This must be the "good karma" that is balancing the bad karma from yesterday. The day was full of it. If you know what I mean. Yeah, that's the ticket! . Restoration of the iconoscope camera went into holding mode as we prepare to integrate new room mate into our home. This will most likely be very disruptive for the first week or two. But, believe you me, friends, this is only a temporary delay. The iconoscope camera is still my priority number one. . March 2006 was a record month for visitors to Labguy's World. The site got 19,564 unique visitors for the month. That's an average 631 visitor's per day. Compare that with July last year with 7,159 for the month. Thanks you all for dropping by. . Why hasn't this site won any internet awards? Ignoring the writing skill, the content is valid. Labguy's World must be a great educational resource as well. . Stay tuned! You never know what will happen next with this nutty hobby and get posted to this site. Heck, I don't even know what's happening around me most of the time!!! At least it amplifies the mystery of life. And, just like a urinal suspended six inches too high, it keeps me on my toes. <smile> Thursday - March 30, 2006
[CRV-59AAE]. . Labguy's World has been doing more work with the television industry. Provided some critical research yesterday to the History Channel. Accessed my overly generous library of vintage television literature. Will give more details when that project reaches completion. . I seem to be getting used to using MS Front Page. So far so good, right? See: CRV-59AAE. I write extremely simple HTML pages, so it has been behaving itself and not trying to "help" me too much. In all honesty, I should be using Notepad for this. But if you were ever forced to watch me spend three hours getting one paragraph "just right", or one photo in just the right size and position, then you would see why old Labguy needs a WYSIWYG editor. . All of my pages are previewed only with Mozilla Firefox. I am aware that MS IE wrecks my tables formatting, but according to my standard advanced HTML book, I am doing nothing wrong. I set the cell property to equal spacing with absolute size declaration, which should apply to all cells, empty or not. Mozilla, Opera and Netscape gets it right, IE squashes the empty cells. They were precisely defined as X by Y pixels. Period. Why can't Microsoft get this right? . If you should note any critical format differences with other web browsers, let me know. Can't say I can do much about it. But, I'm willing to try. For me, the process is the writing. When I have to fight the tools, it distracts me and breaks my concentration resulting in less than an ideal product. If this site were a high school writing project, I doubt I'd get a C. . A temporary new room mate is moving in soon. We are setting him up to find work and a place of his own in the San Jose south bay area. He is a college grad who's claim to fame was his remarkable E-commerce web site project. (See where I'm going with this?) Sounds like Labguy is going to be picking his brain very soon. As the zombies in Night of the Living Dead II like to say, "Bwwwwaaaaaiiiiiinnnnnsssss"! I sure wish I had one. . . well a good one anyways! Saturday - March 25, 2006
. Still no sign of my Iconoscope camera. I guess it is "still in the mail". It is coming from Canada to California. That does typically take more than ten days. It will be posted here at Labguy's World as soon as it arrives. I had one of these cameras back in the 70s.... working! Since it wasn't color, it was not good enough for me. So, I junked it and sold the Iconoscope tube for virtually nothing. Doh! It worked too!!! I had hooked up to my Ampex VR-5000 one inch pre-type A VTR. It was not color also, but that detail seemed to evade me.. Ah, those were the days. I had only the one tape for that machine, so it was constantly re-recorded. None of that video survives. This is my big chance to make up for that. How novel is an Iconoscope camera connected to a miniDV camcorder? Now, that's cool. Stay tuned!!! Wednesday - March 22, 2006
nothing else ever. It tries too hard to help. It destroys page links and re-edits pages I have not even opened! Who wrote this horrible piece of crap, the only web editor I have been able to get to run since being "FORCED TO UPGRADE" to Windows XP. I presume my pages will get those ugly format problems that always arise when switching editors. Right now, I am fighting with the vertical spacing between lines of text. It double spaces my new lines. How do I turn that shit off? . Note the huge gap between these two paragraphs and the one between the horizontal rule and the date above. That is precisely what I DON'T want!!!! I need as much text on screen as possible. White space adds up like traffic fines. . Well, can you believe that this site will be 9 years old this year? I can't. Who would have thunk it! I'd like to extend belated thanks to every person, and there were literally hundreds, who donated bits, pieces and entire volumes of information to make this the premier old VTR site on the web. It would not exist without that input. And a big thanks to Ebay, of all entities, for bringing to light long lost archeological treasures that make this all worthwhile. . The video recorder and camera collection is growing despite my best efforts to sell off equipment. Coming in the mail as I speak is a complete and probably operational WWII Iconoscope camera and another complete Akai VTS-100 system. I have also recently been re-bitten by the SSTV slow scan television bug. (New page coming on that topic soon.) So, I bought up a ton of commercial and homebrew SSTV gear. Loads of fun! Recent Ebay auctions more than completely financed these purchases. Not one penny of my critical savings were touched. . So bare with me as I once again rebuild the site slightly to behave within these new editing tools. I wanted to study video history, not HTML. Oh, well. That's life. Friday - February 03, 2006
smart enough to shovel a ton of money in the bank when things
were good. [HOME] Last updated: March 22, 2006 |
