I was always one of those kids growing up that was pretty obsessed with anything technological. I was definitely part of the 'gadget' generation and as such, small, clever devices that did cool things and had gimmicks always appealed to me. I was quite fortunate to be raised during a time where there was a gadget for everything, and the iPhone either hadn't been invented yet, or it was not good enough at anything to really be versatile and essential like it is now. MP3 players, PDAs, portable CD players, boomboxes, cameras, camcorders... there were slick devices for everything, and you needed multiple gadgets to live a full rich digital life. Because of this, it was quite easy to disconnect from technology back then and communicate with others in the real world... unlike today... Anyways, when I was about 9 or so, I was rummaging through my dad's old junk boxes in the basement and found a Sony Handycam Video8, model CCD-TR91, complete with bag, batteries, charger, and tapes! Now this camera was made in 1994, and at the time when I found it, it was already severely outdated by 12 years or so and had been overtaken by MiniDV and early digital camcorders. Even so, I fell in-love with it very quickly and adopted it into my own arsenal of hand-me-down gadgets and things. I remember being instantly drawn to it straight away because of the precision and design of that tiny 8mm cassette mechanism and the way all of it moved and ejected. I could just watch it take a tape in and out for hours! I really enjoyed this camera and used it for many years to make dumb movies with my family & friends and for the occasional vacation or trip. I also used it for some snow days and the plastics around the handstrap ended up cracking a bit due to the harsh changes in temperature. I vividly remember going down to the local Kroger grocery store around 2008 and buying a few blank Video8 tapes from TDK and using them with it. Yes, even in 2007-2009 when I was using this camera, Video8 still had a weak pulse in stores pretty much everywhere and blank tapes, cleaning cassettes, and accessories could be found pretty easily... although it had all become a bit scarce and expensive so buying new tapes was a very infrequent event for me as a strapped for cash kid. One thing that was NOT readily available at the time for my camera was the batteries. I initially had 3 original Sony Ni-Cd batteries for my camera, and between all 3 of them I probably had 15min of battery life. Me and my dad both searched high and low online for batteries, there just wasn't anyone making them anymore. There was only this sketchy company called PowerMart that offered reconditioned batteries, so I purchased one of those... didn't help me much. As far as the unit itself was concerned, it was a middle of the road to slightly higher-end camera for 1994 and featured HiFi Stereo recording, a color LCD view-finder, SteadyShot, and editing capabilities. It also had a really nice IR remote control with it. The biggest thing it had against it was the lack of Hi8 support (which made buying tapes for it harder at the time as local big box stores had very little regular Video8 tapes in comparison with Hi8 stock). Nevertheless, it was pretty respectable and even when I started using it, it had all of the basic features needed for making pretty good recordings. I probably used this camera from maybe 2008-2015 before problems started occurring, so I did get a lot of mileage out of it. I had it in my possession until maybe 2016 and I don't remember using it past then. The last footage on it was from Fall 2015. The first thing that happened to the camcorder was the loss of color in the video circuitry until the unit warmed up. This was a problem that while frustrating wasn't a big deal to me, and just required some more careful planning and babying when using it. I used it for a few years with this problem, but after this, the video started getting garbled more and more when recording, and then finally it got to where it would record only flashes of white lines with no audio. It could still playback tapes in black and white with no audio. It also developed a very strong odor of fish in its last years that permeated even the bag that it was stored in. I was really sad when this thing finally reached the end of it's usefulness, and being as I was probably 16 or so at the time of its demise, I was at that age where I was curious about repairing old electronics and knew enough to be slightly dangerous, but didn't really have the knowledge or expertise to fix it. I did get it successfully torn apart and found that all of the SMD capacitors had leaked badly and corroded a lot of the boards. Being that I didn't have any of the equipment to begin to repair the camera nor even the understanding of how to order those tiny capacitors, in the trash it all went. Ultimately, I was just proud that I was able to appreciate and take care of such a fragile thing at that age and get so many fun memories from it. Lately, I've really been getting the itch to grab another Handycam from the same vintage as my original one, as I think I have the skills now to recap it properly. I also wanted to experiment with Hi8 as it has a superior resolution to regular ol' Video8. Turns out, finding one of these units from this vintage in good shape without scratches and cracks from being dropped is really tough, so I ended up not going with a used example and instead opted for this new old stock CCD-TR400. It has roughly the same specs as my TR91, but with Hi8 support and a B&W viewfinder instead of the color LCD of my TR91. I did want a color viewfinder, but due to the fact this is a higher end Hi8 unit and in brand new condition, I bit the bullet at $200. The eBay seller was very honest and said she hadn't tested it, and the sealed battery and charger corroborated this. This thing is truly new. It has never been turned on, never accepted a battery, and didn't even have as much as one fingerprint when I unwrapped it. It is truly gorgeous as well and features an even smaller, more compact design than my TR91 had! Feel like I struck gold to find this example of this camera. I gave the entire unit a good smell all around (and probably looked like a ravenous animal doing it) and didn't smell anything like dead fish, so I decided to power it on... and to my surprise it all worked great! It recorded, played back recordings, and did everything I told it to do. My excitement was very brief because once the unit got a little warm after maybe 5min of use, it started smelling slightly so I turned it off quickly and began stripping it. Here is the unit completely stripped of it's case pieces and with the PSU/battery board removed. I had forgotten how complicated these old units were until now! The flood of memories came right back as I looked at all of those ribbon cables and layers of boards that initially gave me anxiety back when I took apart my TR91. Anyways, I took all of the boards out at this point and decided to go board-by-board assessing the leakage and possible corrosion. The first board I took a look at was the PSU board. Wow, there are a lot of tiny little SMD caps on this board, and of course there was a hint of that trademark fishy smell. All of the caps I tested from this board with my PEAK ESR70 were in-spec, but some had just started to leak. Luckily none of the leaking had damaged anything yet! C945, C912, and C930 were actively leaking badly, and you could just sit and stare at C912 and watch the electrolyte ooze out. No doubt when I applied voltage to the unit for the first time, it started the clock ticking. In this photo, you can see that I already removed C945 and all of it's leaked cap juice left behind. I was also very worried about all of those little 10UF 16V caps as they only measure 3mm in diameter... a size that was nearly downright microscopic and which I had never seen before. I also took the opportunity to test these 3 fuses across the main power rails. If enough capacitors short out or leak, these will most always blow, making the entire camera unresponsive to power even once it is recapped. Unsurprisingly, mine were perfectly fine. At this point, I was very enthusiastic about things and knew that the new old stock condition of this unit was a huge reason why these caps were as undisturbed as they were. Next, I moved to the HiFi Audio board of the unit which is usually one of the first boards to go wrong with these camcorders. All of these caps had been leaking for awhile but had clotted (which is very lucky), and the leakage wasn't as severe as some of the larger caps on the PSU, but the smell was certainly stronger here. The solder pads around these capacitors were also greenish looking and were slightly wet. With what I had seen researching these units and with my old TR91, I was extremely pleased at how clean everything was looking. Next I moved to the main function board. More good news. Most of the capacitors hadn't started leaking at all yet, with the exception of C550 (the cap connected to the recording equalizer amp chip IC506), which had pretty significant corrosion to it's pads. the 2 22UF 6V capacitors also had a tiny amount of leaking, but nothing major that would have even caused the unit not to work. Finally, there was these lone 2 capacitors on the CAM board. This board seemed to be some type of interface & processing board for the CCD, and it was loaded with chips and plenty of tiny SMD passive components. I believe that these two 33UF 10V capacitors are bi-polar as they don't have any polarity marker on the top of them. Even if they aren't bipolar, it's better to just buy bipolar for them as replacements since you can sub in bipolar for polarized caps in most situations. So, at this point, it may be tempting to just say that only a few caps were leaking and put the unit back together. Or, maybe you are thinking I can just buy 2 or 3 caps to replace only the ones that are leaking visibly. In reality, this should never be done. These capacitors used in Sony camcorders from 1987-1995 have an infamous reputation for leaking, and rest assured, if I used this camera daily for more than a week or so, all of them would start leaking badly and these photos would look very different. This is what doomed my TR91... it started smelling, kept leaking, and I didn't know what to do, so the caps just leaked until they either went open or shorted. Here are all of the old capacitors removed and placed in a bag. I am not going to go into detail about how I took the old caps off, or put the new ones on due to the fact that this is a fiercely debated subject here on the digital wasteland that is the web. If you REALLY care and want to know, go here to another one of my projects to see the kind of close up work I do and how I do it. Rest assured, there were no torn pads or traces with what I did, and everything cleaned up beautifully. As far as the actual replacement caps go, that turned out to be one of the most tricky parts of this restoration. The old caps used by Sony look to be all Nichicon, 6mmx4mm or 4mmx4mm or those tiny 3mmx4mm ones on the PSU. These days, finding ANY electrolytic capacitor 4mm tall is hard, and I can tell you that any capacitor over about 5.4mm tall will not clear some of the moving parts when the camera is back together. You must get caps that are no more than about 5mm tall, and mostly 4mm in diameter. Sadly, this size was mostly discontinued by brands years ago, and ones that are still made are not readily available. My usual goto, Mouser, didn't have anything I needed. Digikey had very limited choices, but I was able to piece together a recap kit between leftover discontinued Nichicon stock, Panasonic stock, and Wurth stock. It took me 2 hours or more just to verify the measurements, values, and stock options before I finally had an order ready to go through. Back when I recapped that WM-506 a few years ago, it was very easy to find these legacy type SMD caps on all electronics parts dealer sites. I am very much aware that the electrolytic SMD capacitors are obsolete for the most part and not the only options for replacements. In fact, there does seem to be a trend where folks replace the old electrolytic caps with ceramic or tantalum options. While there are size, cost, and possible longevity benefits to this, I have never had much luck with them, think they look ugly in place of a proper SMD electrolytic, and when solid caps fail, they usually do so violently... After replacing all of those caps and reassembling the unit, I was delighted that it was still working the same as it was before. Remember, I am not looking for any improvements in functionality as it worked perfectly before. If you are restoring a used example of this for yourself, you are most likely looking for certain specific functions to be restored (like HiFi sound, Hi8 playback, and color accuracy). This is truly a gorgeous and beautifully engineered video camera, and I am super happy to have one of these again in my clutches! Rest assured, I will be using this for actual recordings except this time, I don't have to worry about leaking caps or bad fishy smells appearing over time. Next day off I get, I'll probably record some Hi8 footage, upload it to YouTube, and then link that here.
The first picture looks quite familiar. I had a similar Sony Camcorder as something to mess around with about 25 years ago. However mine had a Black and White CRT Viewfinder. I guess yours is a LCD although it looks as if they fitted an LCD in a case designed for a CRT. Regarding batteries I always ran mine using rechargeable AAs put in a battery case, which was an official Sony accessory. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/206474929935 Back then the best AA rechargeables only had a capacity of 1000mAH. I would guess that modern Eneloops or similar would last far longer
