Believe it or not, I am still in the process of restoring my home office after the flooding we experienced back in October. There are still many things I can’t find, which seems ridiculous. In a few cases I’ve found things that were broken due to all the shuffling. One of those things was my trusty VCR.

Unlike a lot of things in my office, I have no sentimental attachment to this VCR. I don’t remember where I picked it up or even how long I’ve owned it. It was JVC brand and stereo. It’s funny to me that so many VCRs, even ones made through the late 90s, only have a single mono audio RCA jack.

So while I’m not bummed due to any sentimental attachment to this thing, I am bummed for multiple reasons — the biggest of which is, I used this thing all the time. One of my “hobbies” involves hunting for old VHS tapes and digitally archiving them. I’m not interested in tapes containing movies like the ones you would have bought in a store or rented. I’m always on the hunt for things that were recorded off of television that contain vintage commercials and recordings. (Here’s a YouTube playlist of more than 425 commercials from the 1980s and 1990s I’ve digitized and uploaded). I find all kinds of oddities on tapes from thrift stores, garage sales, and most often estate sales, like this recording of a hockey game from 1994 featuring the San Jose Sharks vs. the Detroit Wings recorded off of ESPN with all the commercials intact.

For what it’s worth I’ve also found a ton of people’s home movies. Nothing gross, but you wouldn’t believe how many random people’s birthday parties and vacations I’ve watched.

I don’t know what caused my VCR to stop working. I moved it from my office out to the garage a month ago. Yesterday I moved it back from the garage to my office, plugged it in, and… nothing. Actually, that’s not true — “nothing” would give me some hope as I’d start looking for a fuse or capacitors or something. (Why any of those things would go bad from simply moving it is beyond me.) Instead, when I plugged the VCR back in it began to make a “slurping” noise. It literally sounded like someone drinking through a straw. Sometimes gears get gummed up and I hoped by leaving it on for a while might warm things up and loosen up whatever was stuck, but the longer I left it turned on the worse things got. It began turning itself on and making noises like someone had shot it in the woods but not killed it.

I’m no expert when it comes to working on VCRs. I was able to open it and found I had left a tape inside. I had as much luck extracting the tape as the VCR itself did which is to say none at all. I even ended up breaking the tape (don’t worry; I had already archived it) trying to remove it with no luck.

With the case removed I could see where the slurping and ticking noises were coming from. The entire mechanism that handles ejecting tapes and firing up the system seems to have failed. I did all the things I knew to do, like blow it out with compressed air and gently try to get things moving manually. Then I did the next thing I knew how to do which was to throw the whole thing in the trash.

I do have a spare VCR, a fact that should surprise no one. It’s not stereo, but the last time I checked, it worked. I still have so much work to do on this room that I probably won’t get around to hooking up that new (old) one until after the holidays. I’ll also be on the hunt for another good quality stereo machine. They’re getting harder to find and more expensive, but I’m always up for the hunt.