What should I do with a broken vcr?

[ojmanyeah]

My parents wanted me to try to get their vcr to work but it has finally bit the dust. I opened up the case and there's a bunch of lights, switches and other stuff in it. As someone with no soldering experience what should I do with all this stuff in it? Or should I just trash it?

 

[grossaffe]

 

[superben51]

Totally fake. Did you see how clean his work table was? Nobodies is ever that clean for real.

 

[Prog]

It depends on the model.
My parents' VCR/DVD combo had a DMG in it in lieu of the Nano.

 

[grossaffe]

Totally fake. Did you see how clean his work table was? Nobodies is ever that clean for real.

Obviously the table was CGI'd because the mess on the table would've been distracting, but the rest is real.

 

[Mario]

I took the VCR read head out of one and rigged a ghetto scroll wheel. I basically glued a mouse scroll wheel to the bottom of the spindle and put it in a small case, but it's really sweet and useful.

 

[ttsgeb]

Pics? I don't quite understand...

 

[Mario]

Imagine this: http://www.instructables.com/id/Spinner ... -VCR-Head/

But much more cheaply and easily done - I glued the scroll wheel mechanism to the bottom spindle instead of making an encoder.

 

[ojmanyeah]

Imagine this: http://www.instructables.com/id/Spinner ... -VCR-Head/

But much more cheaply and easily done - I glued the scroll wheel mechanism to the bottom spindle instead of making an encoder.

That looks pretty sweet. Do you know if anyone has done a worklog on it here? I think that's what I'll do with it. Plus are they advantages/disadvantages to making the encoder vs just gluing the scroll wheel on?

 

[Mario]

It's fancier and much more reliable.

 

[ojmanyeah]

It's fancier and much more reliable.

The encoder is more reliable? Because I saw another video where someone made a custom mouse out of the vcr head and it was still a functioning mouse.



His custom mouse seems far more useful than just the scroll wheel to me. But if I have to sacrifice the optical chip for the encoder I would not be able to use it for the mouse. If I just glued it on I could pretty much do this with half the math too