Reply #11: If it's old, it may simply be dying [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

I had one about 15 years old that made funny noises for a while and then started eating tapes. When it refused to eject a certain tape, I asked the Lounge for advice, and they suggested taking the VCR apart and getting the tape out that way. (It's really not hard to do.) Unfortunately, the inside of the VCR was in such bad shape that I could get the tape out only by taking the whole mechanism apart. So I got one severely mangled tape out and had pieces of the VCR all over the table.

At that point, I just decided to take the old one to the county electronics recycling station and buy a new one for $40.