I have an old clunker of a set, a combined TV and VCR that somebody
gave to us, which works well enough so I keep using it. Or it did: For
some reason the remote now only controls the TV and not the VCR: I
press play, rew,, etc and nothing at all happens.

The remote that came with the unit was nort the original remote, but
it worked okay until a couple of days ago when it suddenly stopped
working rigt. Is the problem in the remote, or did something in the
VCR finally give away and died on me?

Ron