Ian Field wrote:

The old favourite was the sensor bulb blown - its a thin vertical post in
the middle of the deck that pokes up a hole in the bottom of the cassette.

Later models used an IR LED - AFAIK: these never caused problems, so might
be a belt job as others have suggested.


Yeah but realistically, only the 1st/2nd generations of vhs decks used those
incandescent light bulbs, the machine would have to be from the late 70's,
early 80's.

I always figured it was a safety feature, a stupid one, where if the bulb
burned out, the machine wouldn't power on. The only logic behind it was if
the bulb did fail, there would be a possibility of snapping the tape on ff
or rew when it hit the end and threw the machine in the stop mode. No bulb,
no stop at the end of the tape.

Remember the dew sensor?

The early machines had some kind of peice of ceramic with a coil like thing
on it. If it thought there was too much humidity around the video head area,
it wouldn't let the machine power up either, but at least there was a "dew"
light, usually yellow saying why.

But I always though those lamps should of had a "lamp out" indicator too.

-bruce