RCA TR-600 Quadruplex Video Recorder. (Actually a 600A) - Page 2 - UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum

VTRestorer · 8th Apr 2023, 6:07 pm

Lovely job Andy.You must have a great sense of achievement. I am over the moon at finally getting the velcomp working on my TBC-2B (jittery read address generator TTL ICs). It can work without and it's not the best velcomp in the world, but it does make the dots much smaller.

The TR-600 was a very nice looking, but sadly under-rated machine, which is a shame. Lock-up should be very fast when aligned.

That looks like the same tape that makes appearances on Tech Story?

Best wishes

Jonathan

andypilgrim · 9th Apr 2023, 11:24 pm

TBC’s are my nemesis, I admire you for fixing the velcomp on a TBC2. The last one of those I repaired had dud memory chips on all of the memory boards, I think it had been given dud boards from other machines, it took me forever to figure it out and even then I think I changed way more chips than needed to be, it made my head spin lol.

Yes the tape is the one from Tech Story, Zdenek made that tape for me at the beginning of the project as I had no recorded tapes and finding a PAL one seemed at the time nigh on impossible. I bought some new old stock blank tapes and shipped one over to him, he filled it with tone and bars and some music videos and sent it back to me. It’s been very useful as it has so much tone and bars which is more useful when setting up for fault finding than program material. Sadly early on it became victim to a reel servo fault and is now two tapes instead of one, fortunately I had some spare empty spools to wind the half back on to !! Since then I’ve come across others and have a few now.

This has been a fun project, and a massive learning curve for me, as a technology that was just before my time, I learnt helical scanning, segmented was a thing of the past at that point, so it’s interesting to be restoring a quad, and then I have a Bosch BCN51 to do that is of course also segmented.
One thing that does impress me is in the brief times the quad is playing a locked picture tue quality is exceptional, in my mind at least given that I’m dealing with a 50 old machine and probably equally as old magnetic tapes.

Funnily enough sitting in my Workshop near the quad is a Sony HDCam SR machine (which also needs repairing) so I guess they represent the two extreme ends of the broadcast quality magnetic tape era……

Station X · 16th Apr 2023, 7:58 pm

Post to prevent merged thread auto-closing.

8th Apr 2023, 6:07 pm	#21
VTRestorer Triode Join Date: Dec 2022 Location: London, UK. Posts: 18	Re: Rca tr-600a Lovely job Andy.You must have a great sense of achievement. I am over the moon at finally getting the velcomp working on my TBC-2B (jittery read address generator TTL ICs). It can work without and it's not the best velcomp in the world, but it does make the dots much smaller. The TR-600 was a very nice looking, but sadly under-rated machine, which is a shame. Lock-up should be very fast when aligned. That looks like the same tape that makes appearances on Tech Story? Best wishes Jonathan

9th Apr 2023, 11:24 pm	#22
andypilgrim Triode Join Date: May 2021 Location: Hertford, Hertfordshire, UK. Posts: 16	Re: Rca tr-600a TBC’s are my nemesis, I admire you for fixing the velcomp on a TBC2. The last one of those I repaired had dud memory chips on all of the memory boards, I think it had been given dud boards from other machines, it took me forever to figure it out and even then I think I changed way more chips than needed to be, it made my head spin lol. Yes the tape is the one from Tech Story, Zdenek made that tape for me at the beginning of the project as I had no recorded tapes and finding a PAL one seemed at the time nigh on impossible. I bought some new old stock blank tapes and shipped one over to him, he filled it with tone and bars and some music videos and sent it back to me. It’s been very useful as it has so much tone and bars which is more useful when setting up for fault finding than program material. Sadly early on it became victim to a reel servo fault and is now two tapes instead of one, fortunately I had some spare empty spools to wind the half back on to !! Since then I’ve come across others and have a few now. This has been a fun project, and a massive learning curve for me, as a technology that was just before my time, I learnt helical scanning, segmented was a thing of the past at that point, so it’s interesting to be restoring a quad, and then I have a Bosch BCN51 to do that is of course also segmented. One thing that does impress me is in the brief times the quad is playing a locked picture tue quality is exceptional, in my mind at least given that I’m dealing with a 50 old machine and probably equally as old magnetic tapes. Funnily enough sitting in my Workshop near the quad is a Sony HDCam SR machine (which also needs repairing) so I guess they represent the two extreme ends of the broadcast quality magnetic tape era…… Last edited by andypilgrim; 9th Apr 2023 at 11:39 pm. Reason: Typo

16th Apr 2023, 7:58 pm	#23
Station X Moderator Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Ipswich, Suffolk, IP4, UK. Posts: 21,288	Re: RCA TR-600 Quadruplex Video Recorder. (Actually a 600A) Post to prevent merged thread auto-closing. __________________ Graham. Forum Moderator Reach for your meter before you reach for your soldering iron.