Added another color EIAJ VTR to the collection. A reasonably rare [Javelin VTR-300] (Sanyo VTR-2000C).

       I also finally remebered to add John Street's name to my contributors list. Sorry for the long overdue delay, John. It is fixed now.

       It has been almost a year since my last update. It was brought to my attention, by a contirbutor who had devoted great effort to scan acatalog for me seven years ago, that I had forgotten to post his hard work. Well, certainly fixed that. Apologies. See the Color [Shibaden catalog here].

       More to come. Stay tuned!

       Can you believe this? I have just added a working Ampex VR-6000 to my collection! I am very pleased. See it here: [Ampex VR-6000]. Don't forget, almost everything on this site is for sale. No reasonable offers will be refused.

        Posted a few interesting items today. Check these things out: [Ampex and RCA Quadruplex tape cartridges], an [Ampex VR-1500 Remote Control] (scroll down the page a bit) and a very [1970 Cartrivision Prototype Video Cassette]. Also activated a page I've been working for a while now, the [Chester Newell prototype recorders] page.

        Finally posted the Merlin Engineering quadruplex deck I obtained recently. A rare [ME68 dubbing deck]. Check it out! This is an incredible donation from John Streets himself. Thank you, sir.

        Last, but not least, a real odd item. The pistol grip for the 1966 Westel coniscan format portable video system camera. At least that is according to John Streets at Merlin Engineering. There is no reason to doubt this, so [click this link] and check it out for yourself.

        Enjoy!

        Be patient, loyal fans. I just obtained a bunch of historical items. Howazabout an actual Cartrivision prototype cassette from when they were considering using quarter inch tape? This would be one of the earliest prototypes in the engineering process!

Also the very pistol grip for the [Westel Portable Broadcast Camera/Recorder] as shown in the advertisement. Woo hoo!

Also a nice pair of two inch quad carts, one Ampex and one RCA. Sweet!

And some other rare cassettes. Stay tuned, updates very soon!

        The General Electric two inch VTR I recently purchased on Ebay has arrived. I made small error in anouncing its configuration. I thought is was a two inch quadruplex VTR. I was wrong. It turns out to be an octaplex VTR! That is to say, an eight head machine. According to Time Stoffel, these could record two parallel streams of video. Wow! That is cool. Read more about it here: [GE Two Inch Octaplex Mission Recorder]. Still need more facts about this machine to offset my speculating frenzy. If you know about or have documentation for an RO-429(V)/USH-17(V) military machine, please contact me and help out. Thanks in advance!

        Will wonders never cease? Labguy's World now has two excellent examples of Newell principle magnetic tape transports. Not a lot of info available yet. One appears to be an audio recorder and the other was possibly a video recorder. See them here: [Chester Newell, Tape Recording Genius] here. More to come as a I learn more.

Also coming very soon, two quadruplex videotape recorders NOT manufactured by Ampex or RCA! Yep. You heard it here first.

The first machine is a Merlin Engineering ME-68, manufactured for Vidtronics in 1977. A record only transport built from a Shibaden quadruplex VTR transport and Merlin electronics. The head bay is modified to use Ampex MK-X (mark ten) video scanners and VR-2000 audio/control head stacks. The original Shibaden full track back-side erase head is retained. The ME-68 has limited playback capability as it lacks velocity comensation and color correctors. It does have awesome tape handling according to Vidtronics' acceptance letter. Tape packs are alleged to look like new tapes. It's probably a kick ass BW VTR! Thank you John Streets!

The second quadruples VTR is a military flight mission recorder. Manufactured by General Electric. It has not actually arrived yet, but appears to be very compact. Highly likely to have no playback capability - as if that mattered. There are no controls in the deck and a handy 400Hz aircraft AC power source is not handy either. This one comes to us thanks of EDJ surplus. Thanks!

Stay tuned!

       The very very rare Diamond Power model DP-1 Video tape recorder has arrived. Never heard back on the Diamond Power vidicon camera. This tape recorer is in awesome condition. 99%+ intact, even down to the keys for latch locks! Not to shabby! And all for only cost of shipping. Thank you very much!! See the incredible Diamond Power [DP-1 pre-EIAJ format VTR] here.

       Coming soon! A rare Diamond Power model DP-1 Video tape recorder. Definately maybe going to get a Diamond Power vidicon camera as well. Not sure on that second one though. I am always looking for more information about Diamond Power / Diamoned Electronics equipment from the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

       For some reason, I just cleaned up the HTML construction of the front page to my site. WYSIWYG editors produce such badly coded HTML! The last editor I used was Front Page. The page itself was created ten years ago in Netscape Composer. Then hashed through with Composer and Front Page dozens of times, churning the HTML code into a compressed block of dropped scrabble letters. It is cool that the bad code looked just fine in the browser. But, when a human can't read the HTML, it is time to clean it up. Externally, you should see no differences to the front page. There is one thing I'd like to apologize for up front. Notepad does not have a spell checker, so you may have to suffer through some of my tiepos and udder mizspeelinngs. If you point them out, I will gladly fix them.

       There was once a great stone carver and his apprentice. It was the job of the apprentice to flatten the bottom face of the stone prior to the master's work beginning. The apprentice had completed one rather large block, which took him several months to work down. However, right in the middle was a small gouge. The master insisted that the entire bottom be shaved down again until the gouge was removed. The apprentice objected loudly that no one would ever see the tiny flaw, being located so far under the statue.

       "No one will ever know it is there!" whined the apprentice.

       The master replied, "We will know."

       Posted a short page about the [Sony DXC-2000] and DXC-2000A video cameras this evening. I believe they are from 1962. Somehwere in my literature, I recall seeing the date and was totally amazed. If anyone knows better, feel free to correct me about the model year of these cameras.

       To see last year's What's New page, [CLICK HERE].