Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[25 CPS]

I must remember to try the Tek 2465B (ex-BBC with TV option) sometime.

Dang, now you make want a waveform/vector scope (specialised CRO to look at video signals technically ) a bit more.

Trouble is, they're tightly tied to the video standard, so Never Twice (the) Same Colour ones are uninteresting to me, as are SD-SDI ones now that we're running 3G-SDI and up at work.

You reminded me of the time a few years ago when a friend of mine was giving me a drive to work and the car radio was on.  This was something like 7:00 in the morning and some horribly drunk lady called into the radio station and the hosts were egging her on about being drunk so early in the morning.  She said she worked the afternoon shift so it was still early for a night of partying after work.  The hosts kept asking where she worked and she finally said, "Some soldering company in Burlington called Evertz!"

I couldn't stop howling with laughter when I heard that!

[BU508A]

First day at the new job today. I've quit my previous job basically due to being bored.
So most probably less time for TEA and general eevblog forum during the next months.

Gute Fahrt, Käpt'n!

Very late addition: Just as the Captain and his ship are leaving port, a Citrôen Traction Avant skids to a halt on the quay, a very hung-over naval officer jumps out and shouts "Fette Beute!" to properly send the Captain off.

(For those to whom the reference is not obvious, make sure you get the TV series edition, not the movie cut.)

Is the colour pink? 

[mansaxel]

"Some soldering company in Burlington called Evertz!"

I couldn't stop howling with laughter when I heard that!

Naturally, I'm after the Tek offering.

[Vince]

@ VCR gang : thanks for all for your feedback. Problem solved..indeed nothing wrong with my video composite signal, was the bloody LCD TV that fails to deal with it somehow 

It's a TV not a computer screen. It's made to receive TV, both analog and DVB, so you would think its SCART would work with a VCR wouldn't you ? A TV with SCART... what else are going to connect it to, other than A VCR ?!     If it fails to work with a VCR then both SCART and composite then... well it's useless to me, as I won't trust it to display other potential sources of composite like vintage computers or a camera or test gear or what have you. It also has a built-in DVD player with dedicated control buttons... player does not work either, it's kaput. OK.... this TV monitor is going to be taken apart and scrapped tomorrow probably.

I got given also another TV, 32" LCD. Fails to power up. Will see if I can I fix it and will give this one a try. Does not have composite but has SCART.

Anyway. At first I tried with a 75 ohms termination : I found another composite cable, so I could connect the VCR to both the scope and TV at the same time. Of course no picture on the TV but I didn't care, all I wanted is to plug the cable to the TV so that it gets connected to a proper 75ohm load. Then I would at the same time scope the signal, in high-impedance, so I could "spy" the signal without affecting it.
It worked, signal amplitude was not about 1.0Vpp which is correct IIRC.

Didn't know that the sync pulses were hard coded into the tape itself ! Thought they were added by some IC on the main board afterwards... OK so cleaning the head could help there as well then. So I gave that a try. Cleaned the heads/drum with some IPA. Looks clean and shiny but still managed to removed some black stuff on a couple Q-tips. Signla on the scope now looked much better, stable, cleaner, not all randomly going haywire violently as it did in the video I posted yesterday. Not signal is solid, cool.  Still no joy with the LCD TV though...

Only old analog CRT monitor I had, was a tiny portable " CCTV " Sony Trinitron, with a BNC socket as an input. Tried that before cleaning the head, got something but just garbage, like sync problem : pattern of alternating black and white 5mm think horizontal lines, tilted a bit to the right. After cleaning the heads, I get a good picture !! 
Input can be switched to SECAM or PAL. It's SECAM here. I get a good picture either in PAL or SECAM, it's just that in PAL mode, I get a blank and white picture, but still a good/valid picture. One of you did mention that IIRC.

OK so I can button up this VCR and keep it handy, I know it works now. And I now also know that these LCD monitors with a SCART and composite inputs are just useless pieces of shit that can't be trusted, rendering them useless. If you have to pray every time, hoping they would be kind enough to work whatever piece of equipment you might want to connect them to... then I don't see the point. Either it works and you can trust them, or it does not 

Anyway, need to fix that other LCD TV to see if it works better.

[factory]

"Some soldering company in Burlington called Evertz!"

I couldn't stop howling with laughter when I heard that!

Naturally, I'm after the Tek offering.

Shouldn't be too difficult to find one of the dedicated waveform monitors or vector scopes from Tek, I don't think many folk want them.
Aside from the 2465B with TV trigger option, I have a pair of Tek 1781R PAL video measurement set(s) in the repair pile, one of which is ex-BBC newsroom if I remember correctly, so will probably be completely knackered with all the crap it's had to monitor  , I can't remember if that was the one that all the screws were missing from the case.
https://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/1781R

Edit: there are hidden easter eggs in the 1780R at least, according to here.  https://eeggs.com/items/50972.html



David

[Vince]

Yes the old Tek vectorscopes nobody wnats them. I regularyl see them here, usually for cheap.

Found 3 at the moment here, there may be more of them but since people can't spell Tektronix or scope properly, lots of potentially good stuff unfortunately goes under my radar 

https://www.leboncoin.fr/informatique/2084446695.htm

https://www.leboncoin.fr/bricolage/2011229506.htm

https://www.leboncoin.fr/bricolage/2011229506.htm

Oh and this small one from Philips as well :

https://www.leboncoin.fr/image_son/1730213559.htm

[Vince]

This Tektronix TM500 standalone module just popped up.  No idea what it is.. so just in case it's something interesting and rare someone might be interested in ?!

https://www.leboncoin.fr/outillage_materiaux_2nd_oeuvre/2036581441.htm

There is no model number written on the face plate somehow ?! So I can't even look it up on Tekwiki !

Face plate is in French. Says it's an " Ausculteur Dynamique ".  "Dynamic" something... meh ! 

[factory]

Yes the old Tek vectorscopes nobody wnats them. I regularyl see them here, usually for cheap.

Found 3 at the moment here, there may be more of them but since people can't spell Tektronix or scope properly, lots of potentially good stuff unfortunately goes under my radar 

https://www.leboncoin.fr/informatique/2084446695.htm

https://www.leboncoin.fr/bricolage/2011229506.htm

https://www.leboncoin.fr/bricolage/2011229506.htm

Oh and this small one from Philips as well :

https://www.leboncoin.fr/image_son/1730213559.htm

I wouldn't say nobody wants them, as there are (in the UK at least) at least one or two vintage outside broadcast trucks that survive, including one that has restored not to far from me and it contains quite a few working Tek waveform monitors & a Tek vector scope and even one HP 191A waveform monitor.
https://tvobhistory.co.uk/preservation/bbc-north-3/

David

[Cubdriver]

This Tektronix TM500 standalone module just popped up.  No idea what it is.. so jusst in case it's something interesting and rare someone might be interested in ?!

https://www.leboncoin.fr/outillage_materiaux_2nd_oeuvre/2036581441.htm

There is no model number written on the face plate somehow ?! So I can't even look it up on Tekwiki !

Face plate is in French. Says it's an " Ausculteur Dynamique ".  "Dynamic" something... meh ! 

I'd guess that the "Ausculteur Dynamique" is a custom or aftermarket plug-in and not anything made by Tek themselves - I know I've got some 'other' non-Tek 500-series plug ins floating around here.

-Pat

[mnementh]

@ VCR gang : thanks for all for your feedback. Problem solved..indeed nothing wrong with my video composite signal, was the bloody LCD TV that fails to deal with it somehow 
(SNIP)
Didn't know that the sync pulses were hard coded into the tape itself ! Thought they were added by some IC on the main board afterwards... OK so cleaning the head could help there as well then. So I gave that a try. Cleaned the heads/drum with some IPA. Looks clean and shiny but still managed to removed some black stuff on a couple Q-tips. Signal on the scope now looked much better, stable, cleaner, not all randomly going haywire violently as it did in the video I posted yesterday. Now signal is solid, cool...

You're welcome if I was able to help. 

A word of advice, for you and anyone who might be playing along at home: Don't ever use a Q-tip to clean VCR heads; they make special cleaning pads for this which are essentially a bit of thick absorbent paper on a Popsicle stick. As you can see in the pic below, the actual head is a tiny chip of ferroceramic, and it is shaped such that there are essentially tiny hooks at each end which will snag on the fibers of the Q-tip.

   

Vince, you got very lucky this time that you didn't break the head; I've seen so many that a customer tried to clean themselves the same way and it takes almost zero force to make it go "katoink!" This is especially a concern nowadays, as parts availability is essentially nil.

If you can't lay hands on anything like these special cleaning sticks, a much safer approach is this:

   

Take a paper towel (the hard-finish brown commercial ones are actually best here) or a sheet of copier paper and fold it over twice in quarters. If your particular VCR doesn't allow much space, start with a piece approx 200mm². Hold it with your finger right under the double-folded corner and apply a few drops of alcohol to the corner. Note where the heads present themselves at the "front" of the drum and gently lay the alcohol spot against that spot on the drum; DO NOT at any time move the towel up and down. As with the Q-tip, this is the surest way to break that ceramic head.

Now, using a finger of the other hand on the top edge of the drum, rotate the head on its axis forward/backward 5-10 times. 10-20mm back and forth is all it takes. Now, rotate the drum to the next set of heads and repeat until you've gotten all 4 head locations. If the towel/paper shreds, apply fresh alcohol to another spot and use that on the next head. If it leaves any lint on the head, you can usually just blow it off.

The pictures above are from Wikipedia and a good tutorial I found here:

https://www.tgrantphoto.com/sales/index.php/content/a-broken-video-head

Cheers,

mnem
 

[THDplusN_bad]

Ok, I am a tad late with this - but nevertheless: Happy New Year, all! 

[..]
I got given also another TV, 32" LCD. Fails to power up. Will see if I can I fix it and will give this one a try. Does not have composite but has SCART.

[..]

My bet is: Failed capacitors in the switched mode power supply. I have fixed two or three inexpensive Toshiba/Vestel TVs by replacing some electrolytic caps (and a broken opto-coupler in one unit) in the past...

And on the TM500 plug-in: I would strongly agree that this is a custom plug-in. You may want to ask some of the former Tek-employees in the https://groups.io/g/TekScopes/messages group. The TM500/5000 series instruments are also discussed there.

Cheers,

THDplusN_bad

[Neper]

I'd guess that the "Ausculteur Dynamique" is a custom or aftermarket plug-in and not anything made by Tek themselves - I know I've got some 'other' non-Tek 500-series plug ins floating around here.

I'll try an educated guess...

Some kind of equipment for utrasonic non-destructive testing. Sockets for a transmitter and a sensor. A switch for changing the pulse rate ("Cadence"). Output for hooking up a scope as a visualisation device. And note the "LCPC" on the lower right -> Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussées. The French central agency for all things engineering of roads and bridges. Sold heaps of strain and pressure gauges to them during my time in Paris around 1975/76.

So, it's either something they made themselves or they had it made to their specs. Clever stunt to put it into a 500 series housing as a cabinet and power supply. They were quite familiar with those as well.

But nothing Vince could put to any use, not lastly because the transducers are missing.

[Neper]

A word of advice, for you and anyone who might be playing along at home: Don't ever use a Q-tip to clean VCR heads

Vince, you got very lucky this time that you didn't break the head

DO NOT at any time move the towel up and down. As with the Q-tip, this is the surest way to break that ceramic head.

Amen, Brother!

[Vince]

A word of advice, for you and anyone who might be playing along at home: Don't ever use a Q-tip to clean VCR heads;

mnem
 

Ah well.... OK will remember that if I ever have to touche another VCR in the future, which I guess is unlikely...

I just tried the VCR with my computer screen, it has composite video... and this one WORKS ! I can see spaceships and droids now... 
Picture is not super great but well, it's a 30yo VHS tape so what do you expect... 
sometimes it plays in black and white for a few minutes... then back to colour.... then later again back to B&W. Strange. Busted tape I guess.... or maybe the monitor again is playing up, switching from PAL to SECAM by itself over and over again, who knows....

The drum in the VCR makes an irritating loud " gling gling gling gling... " metallic noise as it spins, drives me nut a bit...
When I had the cover off, I could make the noise away by pressing onto the deck with a finger, but now that the cover is back on, can't do that anymore, hmmm.... 



EDIT : hmmm that's strange : when the picture turns to B&W... I notice that I can make it go back to colour if I fast forward just a few seconds. Then I fast rewind a few seconds to go back to the part of the movie that was previously B&W and now... oh magic it's in coiour now !  So that means the tape itself is not the problem I guess.... must be the VCR doing something funny.
Maybe I did damage the heads when cleaning them after all ?! Oh well.... VCR's are a dime a dozen like Cd player, and no sentimental attachement to this one... it was destined to the junk yard...

[Vince]

I'll try an educated guess...

Some kind of equipment for utrasonic non-destructive testing. Sockets for a transmitter and a sensor. A switch for changing the pulse rate ("Cadence"). Output for hooking up a scope as a visualisation device. And note the "LCPC" on the lower right -> Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussées. The French central agency for all things engineering of roads and bridges. Sold heaps of strain and pressure gauges to them during my time in Paris around 1975/76.

So, it's either something they made themselves or they had it made to their specs. Clever stunt to put it into a 500 series housing as a cabinet and power supply. They were quite familiar with those as well.

But nothing Vince could put to any use, not lastly because the transducers are missing.

Hmmm good find with the LCPC !  Could be it indeed... as Google matches for " Auscultation Dynamique " looks like some kind of sound wave based inspection for civil engineering, buildings, concrete structures of all kind... so the LCPC could make use of that then.  Incredible that they went through the trouble of designing their own TM500 module, and make it look good, that's quite some unuaslly sophisticated R&D product... for internal use companies rarely go through that much trouble...
Would have been simpler to design something destined to a larger, roomier enclosure, I would guess.

so Cubdriver was right then... custom module it is !

Yes definitely not something I could make any use of... was not interested anyway, I am not into the TM500 stuff, I posted it here in case those who are might knew what it was and could possibly be interested...

[Vince]

Ok, I am a tad late with this - but nevertheless: Happy New Year, all! 

[..]
I got given also another TV, 32" LCD. Fails to power up. Will see if I can I fix it and will give this one a try. Does not have composite but has SCART.

[..]

My bet is: Failed capacitors in the switched mode power supply. I have fixed two or three inexpensive Toshiba/Vestel TVs by replacing some electrolytic caps (and a broken opto-coupler in one unit) in the past...

THDplusN_bad

Yes that's my bet (hope at least ! ) too ! The two 22" LCD monitor I fixed last week, I fixed them both with some cap in the power board ! 

[mansaxel]

I just tried the VCR with my computer screen, it has composite video... and this one WORKS ! I can see spaceships and droids now... 
Picture is not super great but well, it's a 30yo VHS tape so what do you expect... 
sometimes it plays in black and white for a few minutes... then back to colour.... then later again back to B&W. Strange. Busted tape I guess.... or maybe the monitor again is playing up, switching from PAL to SECAM by itself over and over again, who knows....

The drum in the VCR makes an irritating loud " gling gling gling gling... " metallic noise as it spins, drives me nut a bit...
When I had the cover off, I could make the noise away by pressing onto the deck with a finger, but now that the cover is back on, can't do that anymore, hmmm.... 

This is why I am so happy that harddrives have enough storage and bandwidth, and are cheap enough that video cassettes and other analog tape media are going away very fast. I've not played any of them for ages, and I plan to keep it like that.  Digital video on random access storage is so much better in so many ways.

and no sentimental attachement to this one... it was destined to the junk yard...

A-MEN, brother. Tape is impressive, and rotating head recorders many more times so, but they are like the voltage regulator on USN submarines of the 1940s (A true Rube Goldberg which used a motorised drive on a rheostat to keep lighting voltage steady as if they rose too high, bulbs would burn out. ) -- something that's fascinating but best kept in a museum.

[Cerebus]

You could just put prime/paint the top of the knob to fill the "crevasses" or whatever the white paint had seeped into. Then sand that down to be smooth. Then make a clean dimple using a cutting tool. Secure the knob in a vice, bring it to the drill press. Don't use a regular drill bit as it will probably make a mess. Instead use one of those bits that have a flat end/face, rather than pointy/conical. I don't know how it's called.... we used on aircraft fitting when a fastener was too close to the radius / pocket edge and the head of the fastener would be prevented from sitting perfectly flat on the fitting surface, hence not doing its job properly. We called it "spot face "IIRC in English on the drawings.

Someone's probably already got to this, but I'm just commenting in reading order so if they have "Meh".

"Spot facing" is the activity, but the tool is just a plain old end mill. This 1.5mm end mill what I have here is probably close to what you'd want for that 'dot':



Making a hole to take the head of a fastener I would call "counterboring" and the tool a "counterbore". Herewith a counterbore for an M3 screw with a 5.5mm head (e.g. ISO 14580 torx low cylinder head) with a pilot that fits a 3.2mm hole and a cutter that makes a faced 5.9mm hole concentric to it.

[Bud]

: when the picture turns to B&W... I notice that I can make it go back to colour if I fast forward just a few seconds. Then I fast rewind a few seconds to go back to the part of the movie that was previously B&W and now... oh magic it's in coiour now !  So that means the tape itself is not the problem I guess.... must be the VCR doing something funny.

I am pretty sure it is false triggering on turning the color decoder on when you wiggle it that way. If you look at the color picture you attached, it is evident the colors are wrong and color interferrence can be seen in form of a mesh, also visible on top of the black frame bars.

[Specmaster]

@ VCR gang : thanks for all for your feedback. Problem solved..indeed nothing wrong with my video composite signal, was the bloody LCD TV that fails to deal with it somehow 
(SNIP)
Didn't know that the sync pulses were hard coded into the tape itself ! Thought they were added by some IC on the main board afterwards... OK so cleaning the head could help there as well then. So I gave that a try. Cleaned the heads/drum with some IPA. Looks clean and shiny but still managed to removed some black stuff on a couple Q-tips. Signal on the scope now looked much better, stable, cleaner, not all randomly going haywire violently as it did in the video I posted yesterday. Now signal is solid, cool...

You're welcome if I was able to help. 

A word of advice, for you and anyone who might be playing along at home: Don't ever use a Q-tip to clean VCR heads; they make special cleaning pads for this which are essentially a bit of thick absorbent paper on a Popsicle stick. As you can see in the pic below, the actual head is a tiny chip of ferroceramic, and it is shaped such that there are essentially tiny hooks at each end which will snag on the fibers of the Q-tip.

   

Vince, you got very lucky this time that you didn't break the head; I've seen so many that a customer tried to clean themselves the same way and it takes almost zero force to make it go "katoink!" This is especially a concern nowadays, as parts availability is essentially nil.

If you can't lay hands on anything like these special cleaning sticks, a much safer approach is this:

   

Take a paper towel (the hard-finish brown commercial ones are actually best here) or a sheet of copier paper and fold it over twice in quarters. If your particular VCR doesn't allow much space, start with a piece approx 200mm². Hold it with your finger right under the double-folded corner and apply a few drops of alcohol to the corner. Note where the heads present themselves at the "front" of the drum and gently lay the alcohol spot against that spot on the drum; DO NOT at any time move the towel up and down. As with the Q-tip, this is the surest way to break that ceramic head.

Now, using a finger of the other hand on the top edge of the drum, rotate the head on its axis forward/backward 5-10 times. 10-20mm back and forth is all it takes. Now, rotate the drum to the next set of heads and repeat until you've gotten all 4 head locations. If the towel/paper shreds, apply fresh alcohol to another spot and use that on the next head. If it leaves any lint on the head, you can usually just blow it off.

The pictures above are from Wikipedia and a good tutorial I found here:

https://www.tgrantphoto.com/sales/index.php/content/a-broken-video-head

Cheers,

mnem
 

Oh hell yes, seen plenty of ruined heads where people tried to save buying a proper head cleaner tape, especially as they can only be used once.

I really didn't think that anyone ever used VHS tapes any more, its either DVD or BluRay discs or even streaming services these days.

Mind you there plenty of VHS tapes in thrift stores, but I really wouldn't have thought that it was worthwhile using a VHS player/recorder given the alternatives are so much better. Vince, you have been lucky as Mnementh says that the head has survived so far. If the head was that dirty then you bet that the pinch rollers and other parts of the mechanism will also require some careful attention before it starts to eschew through tapes leaving them in a tangled heap.

[Vince]

: when the picture turns to B&W... I notice that I can make it go back to colour if I fast forward just a few seconds. Then I fast rewind a few seconds to go back to the part of the movie that was previously B&W and now... oh magic it's in coiour now !  So that means the tape itself is not the problem I guess.... must be the VCR doing something funny.

I am pretty sure it is false triggering on turning the color decoder on when you wiggle it that way. If you look at the color picture you attached, it is evident the colors are wrong and color interferrence can be seen in form of a mesh, also visible on top of the black frame bars.

I don't understand any of what you say, I don't kn,ow my VCR stuff 

But do I sense that you agree that the problem might that the tape is not guided and/tensionned properly ? After wigglijg it a bit using Fast forward/rewind, I had no more B&W ruin my viewing for the entire movie !   
So I guess the tape was not properly positioned on the drum, and wiggling it brought it back where it should be.
I guess when in playback mode, it's a bit loose and wanders about. Might also (?) explain another issue I am witnessing : very blurry/fuzzy picture, like it's way out of "focus", say. Also very unstable, it's moving up and down all the time, randomly, but incessantly.

I guess could be worse playing with the mechanical adjustments responsible for positioning and tensioning (is that a new word ? Firefox chokes on it...) the tape ? Don't don't how to do that, need to do some reading...

I did watch a few VCR repair/service videos on " 12votlvids " YT channel. Will watch his VCR vids again to refresh my memory....

[Vince]

You could just put prime/paint the top of the knob to fill the "crevasses" or whatever the white paint had seeped into. Then sand that down to be smooth. Then make a clean dimple using a cutting tool. Secure the knob in a vice, bring it to the drill press. Don't use a regular drill bit as it will probably make a mess. Instead use one of those bits that have a flat end/face, rather than pointy/conical. I don't know how it's called.... we used on aircraft fitting when a fastener was too close to the radius / pocket edge and the head of the fastener would be prevented from sitting perfectly flat on the fitting surface, hence not doing its job properly. We called it "spot face "IIRC in English on the drawings.

Someone's probably already got to this, but I'm just commenting in reading order so if they have "Meh".

"Spot facing" is the activity, but the tool is just a plain old end mill. This 1.5mm end mill what I have here is probably close to what you'd want for that 'dot':

Yes that's what I had in mind.....   

[mnementh]

and no sentimental attachement to this one... it was destined to the junk yard...

A-MEN, brother. Tape is impressive, and rotating head recorders many more times so, but they are like the voltage regulator on USN submarines of the 1940s (A true Rube Goldberg which used a motorised drive on a rheostat to keep lighting voltage steady as if they rose too high, bulbs would burn out. ) -- something that's fascinating but best kept in a museum.

VCRs, car stereos/amps and bookshelf/boombox CD player/stereos were my bread & butter for about 4 years, while I took the grand detour full-timing it in a motorhome. I'd spend the early morning shopping the flea markets for units to fix, then set up my tables with 40-80 pieces and be sold out by lunchtime. lather, rinse, repeat 2-4 times a week.

mnem
*memories of another life*

[xrunner]

Vince,

I did some painting today with some buttons I was using as prototypes. I painted one flat black (because I don't yet have gloss black). I did NO sanding or priming as a test. Just doing that one step makes it look a lot better. On a second one, I'm going to do the full treatment. Meaning, sand, prime, sand, prime, sand, paint final coat.

So far it's looking really good.

May even be able to pass your anal-retentiveness test. 

We shall see ...

[Vince]

I just tried the VCR with my computer screen, it has composite video... and this one WORKS ! I can see spaceships and droids now... 
Picture is not super great but well, it's a 30yo VHS tape so what do you expect... 
sometimes it plays in black and white for a few minutes... then back to colour.... then later again back to B&W. Strange. Busted tape I guess.... or maybe the monitor again is playing up, switching from PAL to SECAM by itself over and over again, who knows....

The drum in the VCR makes an irritating loud " gling gling gling gling... " metallic noise as it spins, drives me nut a bit...
When I had the cover off, I could make the noise away by pressing onto the deck with a finger, but now that the cover is back on, can't do that anymore, hmmm.... 

This is why I am so happy that harddrives have enough storage and bandwidth, and are cheap enough that video cassettes and other analog tape media are going away very fast. I've not played any of them for ages, and I plan to keep it like that.  Digital video on random access storage is so much better in so many ways.

and no sentimental attachement to this one... it was destined to the junk yard...

A-MEN, brother. Tape is impressive, and rotating head recorders many more times so, but they are like the voltage regulator on USN submarines of the 1940s (A true Rube Goldberg which used a motorised drive on a rheostat to keep lighting voltage steady as if they rose too high, bulbs would burn out. ) -- something that's fascinating but best kept in a museum.

I guess it's like any old stuff, people who like them don't do so out of technical merits, just like I don't collect old glowing Tek scopes for their technical merits.... they don't have Wifi nor 10M of sampling memory... but I still love them anyway. Same with oil CD players, the early ones from the late '80's / early '90's, not the junk that followed. I like them somehow. Have my old childhood 6 dic Philips CDC486 cassette changer here in the lab, plays all day long my favorite CD's, love it. I would not replace it with an iPod for the life of me, even though it would be more practical I guess. 
I just don't get any emotions or vibes from a tiny solid state music player, just does not turn me on at all, but it's just me. Have a couple late '80's Philips swing arms with a TDA1541A, I like the very much.

So I guess why wouldn't there be some people out there that like VCRs ?! 

As for me, VCRs kinda leave me cold... even back in the day. I remember when my dad bought one. Was 12 year old probably or something. 1989 or 1990 I think. Having a VCR , such a modern state of the art thing... I felt so excited curious and somehow like I was now upper class suddenly ! 
Excitement soon vanished. I remember we recorded ONE movie from TV, just ONE, so much so that I still vividly remember the name of that movie ! It was called " Les dieux sont tombés sur la tête ", was about an African tribe that has an unusual language, where they make lots of "click click " type sounds serving as vocabulary or grammar can't remember...
Then I recorded a 10/15 minutes program about the Lamborghini Diablo that had just come out. It came out in 1990 IIRC that dates the VCR.
My mom then promptly erased it by mistake when she recorded something else on top of it... gone was the Diablo, I was not happy.
And that was it for our VCR ! 3 months later everybody in the house had already totally lost interest and the thing was gathering dust !