LabGuy's World:1976 Quasar VR-1000 Great Time Machine New Addition 02.01.26 1976 Quasar VR-1000 Great Time Machine and matching VT-100 Mechanical Timer .         Vintage: Mid 1970s. This is a VX format machine. This is the only model VCR ever manufactured in this format! (That I know of!) It uses a unique cartridge, with coaxial stacked reels of tape and in cartridge scanning. The head drum actually intrudes into the cartridge. The sliding lever, in front of the cartridge door in the photo, unscrews a plastic plug from the cassette for operation. After a tape is viewed, the sliding lever is moved to the left and the plug is screwed back into the cassette! Very Rube Goldberg, indeed! The tape is one half inch in width. The video recording system consists of a one head, full alpha wrap design. This gives twice the tape to head speed of two head designs. This is also why the plug is needed in the cassette. The tape is already pre wrapped in the full loop necessary to encompass the drum. These machines made very nice video and had cartridges up tot two hours in length. Unfortunately, the tape cartridge is larger than most VCR's today! The small monitor, seen in the background of the first photo, is my JVC 5" color monitor and is not part of the VCR.         The second photo is of the VT-100 mechanical timer. To program this, you remove the plastic cover on the right hand clock face and poke little pins into slots corresponding to the times you want the VCR to start and stop. The timer just turns the AC power off and on to operate the VCR deck. Being mechanical, you just put in a tape, press the lever to record, and activate the timer. It will repeat the start stop times every day until disabled. The VCR would stop automatically if the tape reached the end also. This would be perfect for capturing soap operas!         In the photos above, I compare the VX format cassette with a couple of other obsolete formats. Upper left is a V-Cord II tape and its slip cover ~ about the size of an 8 track tape. Lower center is an Akai Activideo cassette ~ about the size of a Betamax cassette. Upper right is the VX cassette which is larger than two VHS tapes stacked one upon the other! In fact, it is the same overall dimensions as a standard size Umatic video cassette, only a little thicker. You can easily see the nested, coaxial arrangement of the tape reels (white) and also the screw in tape holding plug (gray) that keeps the full wrap of tape in place. All of the heads, including full erase and the audio/control stack intrude into the tape cartridge while it is in the machine. The VX tapes were available in three lengths. They were; 60, 100 and 120 minutes. The longitudinal tape speed is only 2 inches per second, so the tape lengths were 600, 1000, and 1200 feet respectively. Update Information 02.04.04 .         After receiving another tape for this machine, the heads clogged up while I was trying to play it. In attempting to clean the head, I made the most amazing discovery! The head was very inaccessible, so I removed the plastic top of the cassette elevator and discovered that the head drum is easily REMOVED for cleaning as seen in the first photo (directly above)! You simply unscrew a knurled nut and lift the head wheel, complete with video tape head and half of the rotary transformer, right out of the machine. This assembly is quite fragile, but it was a heck of a lot easier to clean, than if I'd tried to reach it from outside the deck! What a clever innovation! Why didn't this catch on in later VCRs? Photos 2 & 3 show the inside of the deck with and without the head wheel. Photo 4 is the head wheel, flipped upside down to show the video head and the rotary transformer winding. The last photo is a close up of the actual video tape head. The small drilled out recesses on either side of the video head are for balancing the wheel.         This head wheel is 1 and 7/8 inches across. That gives a circumference of roughly 6. 08 inches. Rotating at 59.94 RPS (for NTSC) gives it a head to tape writing speed in the vicinity of 365 IPS. Not bad at all. These machines produce very respectable pictures with fine detail and rich saturated colors.         NEEDED: Service literature for this beauty! [HOME]......[VIDEO RECORDERS MUSEUM] Last updated: January 09, 2005