That would have been a pretty sweet camcorder back in the day!

*WOW TIMESTAMPS FOR EACH ITEM :O* Now I can skip right to the clickbait!

The Snapistor is both brilliant and ridiculous at the same time 🤪

I want to see the next episode recorded on that panasonic camcorder.

The reason they used that ceramic hybrid pcb is clearly because they hadn't heard of Snapistors!!!! :-)

Snapistor was a new component I just learned about. thanks

I especially love how the speaker on that camcorder is placed right next to the ear. Somebody clearly had wrapped their head around how the machine wraps around your head.

Wow that LCR box is so nice inside it should be in a clear case

Yes you are THAT predictible. So much that many other KZfaqrs have taken up your expressions and uses them while citing you ;)

Apparently, KainkaLabs was founded by Burkhard Kainka who also designed a few electronics kits for kids which were popular in Germany. One of these was a major reason for my interest in electronics and for me studying electrical engineering. Fascinating!

I have to stop watching for a second to appreciate the accuracy of that autofocus there 2:13 😨

About the G-Shock Mudmaster (Model: GWG-1000): It's one of the more expensive G-Shock "master" models and apart from its ruggedness it's pretty much fully featured including solar power, atomic time, compass, altimeter, barometer and thermometer (not isolated, it heats up when wearing) and a sapphire glass. The LED illumination is one of the best available as it not only illuminates the mechanical watch face but also the display. It's very easy to read under all conditions. While it is certainly a beast of a watch it is actually quite comfortable to wear thanks to the wristband parts you didn't get. You can operate the big buttons with gloves. Some annotations to the teardown: - 13:05 The knob on the right is not a sensor but simply the crown. A bit fancy as it can be secured, but not connected electrically. A temp sensor wouldn't make sense if you think on it for a moment. To remove the crown safely you need to push a needle/pin in a certain hole in the backside of the module. You butchered it, though. - 14:40 The two little gold colored springs aren't for the piezo transducer but simply make contact to the copper(?) insert in the back plate to sense if it is removed (then the watch disables its sensors etc.). There is a separate silvery spring for the piezo on the other side of the rechargeable battery. - 14:50 The gray rubber part is meant to protect the ribbon connector for the left-hand sensor array. It doesn't secure the battery. - 20:15 The part jumping out isn't the crystal but the RF antenna. You can see the backside of the coil at 20:42. The crystal is bit to the side of the main chippy. - 21:00 The display isn't an OLED but a simple LCD - simply for power consumption reasons (it needs to be illuminated by a white LED in the dark). It's inverted to fit the "tactical style", making it look like an OLED, though. See this disassembly video for more info: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Y9CGrZqF372ogYk.html

They describe the MHP30 as a preheater but honestly I have a bunch of aluminium blocks that are the same height as it (to sit the board on and slide it around) and it’s fantastic for reflowing/soldering basic small PCBs. I love it. Very convenient.

That pot is definitely an add in by someone along with the XLR. I spotted an extra switch also that was not stock.

I watch most videos at 1.5 - 1.75x speed and they appear pretty Normal. If I watch one of Dave's video's at 1.5x it's like watching squirrels on crack.

Putting it on ceramic means you can do automated laser trim as whole circuit. The company I work for makes a machine specifically for doing this, well, we did until we sold the trim division off last year. We also made machines that laser trimmed IC dies like what you would see in DAC and ADCs.

I used "inverted snapistors" in the past - soldering several 0805s on top of each other until I got the desired value of resistance...

Snapistor is actually Swedish origin from the '60's. I remember those from my tradeschool. Never used ones, but funny little curiosity. CerMet trimmers in mid nineties were so cheap that those went obsolete.

Jeez, I think I remember seeing Snapistors advertised as some new thing in some trade rag, back in the day. Maybe mid 70s?

That MHP30 looks awesome, good for soldering LED emitters

Casio watch in teardown was very interesting and sorry Dave you not mention some things: 1 temperature sensor is simple crown. 2 "crystal oscillator" was antenna for radio time synchronization (DCF77). Every day watch at 2-4 am try to synchronize. 3 This watch has solar cell and not simple battery but rechargeable (life time of battery cell 10 years), watch was long time in dark box so it need to bee charged (placed on bright light).

Remember to include the name "That crazy Aussie bloke" on your packages!

I worked in a small indie studio in the 80's, we used one of those camcorders. In the studio, it was camera 3, but it was also perfect for location work. We did corperate vids, promo work and the occasional music vid for local bands. It was great picture quality.

I love the symbol they invented for the snapistor! Quite snappy!

That's Roger's substitution box from over at Kainka Labs! Hi Roger!

I used to lug around one of those camcorders back in the day. Those can be sold for a pretty penny sometimes, since businesses have started digitizing VHS-tapes and snapping up a lot of S-VHS machines. I just wish I had known that earlier and bought a kick ass player for cheap with TBC and all the bells and whistles.

625 was the number of lines TV unlike the old 405:-)

I have opened by Casio watch as well. The spring contacts are tiny and I managed to somehow miss the connection for the light button. The gunk and smell in there after 8-9 years of wearing it (not daily) was absurd tho.

Dave, would be retro groovy baby if you do a project or a repair using the snapistor. Bonus points if you can work in the valves!

you can also snap away ceramic disk capacitors to trim their values

The MHP30 is described as a preheater but it's a totally usable hotplate for reflowing. Works much better than my (defunct) ReflowR did and the small size is actually a huge benefit since you don't need to mask off half of the board you actually don't want to fry the components on; it's brilliant!

My uncle use to use that exact camera for filming weddings back in the day, I use to go with him sometimes to help film. he had several of them, was quite fun to do actually.

Nice crack in one of the leads from the PTC on that small pocket multimeter ;)

Wow integrated tape mechanism, such joy compared to the very early VHS camera I used. The camera was the same size, but you got an entirely separate full size VHS player, the later was extremely heavy. A 1.8M cable connected the two units together, so moving it required two people. For added pain, we were using this setup in the rain! So everything was in garbage to keep the water off.

58:50 Isn't that 6 pin chip just above the USB connector that does the isolation? Looking at it metal tab isn't connected to the ground either. It goes throught some capacitor.

Yes, please more vintage camcorder teardowns.

1:00 Truly amazing. A portable television studio. No WONDER your president has to be an actor, he's got to look good on television....

I remember the case used for the LCR box from when I was a kid, I think I used some of those for products. I'm surprised that they are still available!

The Casio watches with temperature sensor can't measure temperature while on the wrist. The instructions state to take them off about 20 minutes (IIRC) before taking the measurement. Trying to thermally insulate the sensor is a fool's errand. No matter how much you try to keep the body heat getting at the sensor from the outside, the main body of the watch is more or less at your body temperature and will transfer to the sensor from the inside. The only kind of temperature sensor that I can imagine working halfway reliably on a watch is some kind of an IR sensor.

That’s not a knoife....now THAT, THAT’s a Knoife! LOL!

some cool bits n pieces ...thanks Dave

About snapistors, I have used those in 80's, that was very stabile way to calibrate power supply or precision op once in the lifetime. Aspo was also relative big company making hybrid components for many companies, it was very common that when we run out of space on pcb, we where asked to put part of the circuits on hybrid components, it was time when we had fets, but run out of space so we made kind of ULN2xxx circuits but with many A outputs, and input circuits with high voltage inputs where also made (200..800V)

Legend has it if your favourite segment isn't mailbag, you are not allowed to be a subscriber.

Used! I actually repaired those camcorders. The cassette holder in that one is actually broken. It shouldn't be that loose. It's a pro-sumer model, halfway between professional and consumer models.

15:06 no, these contacts are unrelated to battery, that round shaped thing on the steel back is the piezo speaker that was pushed onto them.

Love the little preheater! Ordered.

I ran with a few of those cameras back in the day. I loved it for what it was!

That RLC Box at 25:18 is from Roger at KainkaLabs. Here is his video using it to demonstrate a problem with an EEVblog 121GW Multimeter kzfaq.info/get/bejne/p6pli5Bo3OCnY30.html

I remember when those giant G-shock watches were all the rage, all the cool kids at school had them back in the 90s. I had some shitty white plastic/rubber Baby-G knockoff, lol.

I am a pretty new to electronics and I really find your channel entertaining and educational . Big thank you for keeping it up ,you though me a lot. Big fan of yours.

SVHS gave a really good picture for its time. A good professional SVHS deck was subjectively very close to DVD quality. The two are hard to compare because one is analog, and the other digital with compression, but on the TVs of those times SVHS was really good.

Many thanks for the video. Never heard of snapistors here in Russia. Love the German valve kit!

Did they make the Glueistor to fix over zealous snipping?

i used one of those all through my high school years ...... i'm now 40 lol .. nice find :)

4:10 literally every VHS from that Era had character insertion... 🤣

Swear thats the camcorder the camerman in tony hawk had!! That would make a bad ass sponsorme, especially today!!!!

0:16 *When I put a 9V battery on my tongue*

I remember using the Panasonic M7 camera at high school in my film and TV subject. It was awesome.

So many mistakes in the GSHOCK teardown. :( Dave didn't realise he'd removed the contacts for the big buttons and wrongly assumed the shaft itself was the contact. Didn't unscrew the bolts holding the PCB. Called the rotary encoder temperature sensor. Plus I'm not convinced what he called the crystal was actually the crystal.

The 625 doesn't refer to pixels, it's 625 lines as in the PAL television system used in the UK and Aus.

The Miniware Hotplate: I recently saw Limor Fried reflowing a prototype RP2040 board on a Miniware MHP30 hotplate. Tried it myself. First I reflowed a ESP32-S2 module and some smt passives onto a board with the MHp30 as the only heater. I supported one end of the board with just a bit of wood, that I cut in the bandsaw to the same height as the hotplate. Then I put paste on the rest of the pads and successfully reflowed a Raspberry Pico onto it. Works like a charm for small prototypes. Good enough for Australia - as well as my part of the world.

I used one very like that (can't remember the exact model) when my daughter was born (1997) to record the first baby shots at the hospital. It was borrowed from the mother in law so I didn't spend that long with it and within a few years we had a Sony Hi8 camcorder of our own which was much more convenient. Your video certainly brings back memories of lugging that around on my shoulder.

I forgot the exact model, but we used to use the NTSC equivalent of that camcorder in or high school video production class for the morning news reports/announcements and recording productions put on by the drama club back in the late 90s

I used one of those Panasonic S-VHS camcorders when I was in college (I was a broadcasting major for a bit). I think that model was called the AG-456 in North America; Panasonic used the “AG” model number prefix for what they called “industrial” video gear - better than consumer-grade kit, but not quite high-end enough to be considered “broadcast” quality. The XLR audio input was definitely an aftermarket add-on. The “edit” jack on the back connected to an edit controller, which could start/stop/rewind/fast-forward the video with frame-level accuracy. The person editing the video would mark the “in” and “out” points of the video with the edit controller, and then the controller would cue the tape to assemble the edit onto another videotape recorder. The fancier edit controllers could trigger a video mixer (via IEEE-488 or proprietary bus) to do synchronized dissolves and the like. Back then, I worked in a college campus TV studio that contained something like $250,000 worth of gear; you could now achieve the same sorts of results with an iPad.

Gunk on the front is because there was a ND filter stuck there, to protect the optics from dirt and rain, as these were very likely to be used outdoors, and while you had a rain hood for them, the lens would stick out of the hood, while the XLR would lead to the on the point news reporter with the branded mic in hand, and with probably at least 4 covers for various news channels to do identity, plus a blank one for the take for the syndicated feeds.

17:40 - At least the front didn't fall off! :)

Just a little correction: S-VHS doesn't have "625 pixels across". Being an analog medium, S-VHS doesn't have pixels at all. The 625 refers to the number of horizontal lines in a PAL signal, including the VBI. Even the "420 lines" and "240 lines" cited for S-VHS and VHS aren't really anything exact. These are approximate values for the horizontal resolution, and although these are often called "lines", it isn't really correct. You can think of it more like the approximate number of distinct elements that can be seen on screen within each horizontal line.

Hi David, I think the black thing in 20:15 in Casio watch isn't the crystal. Isn't it the coil for radio band time synchronization?

Ladyada over at Adafruit has been doing a ton of reflow of dev boards directly on that mini hot plate, looks like it's part of her daily workflow now. I wonder if it has temperature profiles, it looks like it's working pretty slick for lead free reflow. I'm rather tempted since I only make small stuff, just like the recent dev boards. Interesting that you saw it solely as a preheater. Ah, nice that the magic daq thing is isolated USB (it said it was isolated on the data sheet), that's a smart detail. Reminds me I need to get a USB isolator. Is U6 a really small isolator/optocoupler? Spotted the jlink on the home lab bench. The square mystery intrigues me, some kind of display? Man, I could go for having a pressure sensor on me for headache avoidance/mitigation. That's a beautiful RLC decade box, really pretty. Expensive but I assume worth every euro-penny. Ooh, and the tube dev kit doesn't have just regular headers. It's got the lovely round Swiss machine pin headers.

The laser trimming: I saw similar hybrid modules from a company doing ultrasonic material testing. The whole module automatically runs into the laser machine and gets calibrated by burning the resistors. Probably it´s more accurate and convenient to have all the amplifier components on the same board.

I could find a dutch article from 1975 that mentions the snapistor from Aspoparamic! So it probably is from that era

i have a few camcorders, still use them for videos today cause they are just so freakin cool!

Lol, no cameras don't muddy up photos with date/time overlays, but certainly most cameras these days generate EXIF data, which includes date, time, geolocation, camera make/model, f-stop, orientation, exposure, image resolution, etc, over 30 data points in the latest version of EXIF.

Should send the g shock to the hydraulic press channel for their deep sea pressure tube!

That gunk on the lens edge is probably from the rubber cone that keeps out side light from the lens. It doesn't have to be rubber, but the old school rubber cones could be folded back over the lens to keep the storage / transport size down.

Crocodile Dundee would say: " That's not a knife " 😁

Whoa.. Went 5 mins in an I am already into Max Headroom flashback. Dave how did you not make the connection!!

We dont need date/time overlay anymore because those info are in the metadata of the file.

I would absolutely set my mug on that pre-heater to keep coffee warm until I burnt my hand.

The so called BGA preheater probably is for soldering the new balls the bga chip when has been removed from the pcb and not for "preheating" the pcb because is very small and there are a lot of components soldered in the opposite side so the pcb must not touch the heating plate.Its job is a part of reballing procedure or a burned led removing from the led backlight strips of televisions.Preheating plates are a lot more large than this.

the snapistor begs the question: where's the snapacitor??

Generous of you to volunteer Australia (not to be confused with Austria) as landfill for the world's EE waste!

In highschool we used these Panasonic Camcorder and in nightclass with Video sound project we could do and the awesome Amiga 2000 to do titles etc. and later got paid a few years to play around we these :) for the time they were really awesome.

You're right, it was a hot camera in its day.i used it a d it's compatition, Sony and JVC camerass. They were huge in corporate and collage TV. Education was and still is a huge market for mid level cameras.

Yes dave, todays digital cameras does have a timestamp usually written in the file properties of the picture :)

I hired a Panasonic S-VHS like that years ago to shoot a wedding. It had excellent picture quality.

Today's cameras don't need date time overlay because all information is embedded in the file as metadata. But there are available overlay filters for that retro 1980's look

Everybody uses (a clone of) the MAX7456 for text overlay. This 30 year old design is still used today for drones. I did a MCU based text overlay (M0+ based) but did not like the legal liabilities in the US.

I took video of an office party in the late 80s using one of the directors VHS camera!

Back in the day I would have drooled over a camcorder like that!

for the magicdaq, is the isolation perhaps in the usb cable ?

interestingly, there seems to be something like a programming connector and some labeled pins on the cheapo multimeter...

I used one of those SVHS cameras to record football games in HS - WAY after they were obsolete - somewhere around the 2008 era, ours worked pretty much flawlessly except that it had shite batteries. Filled up many SVHS tapes with it and used a capture card to digitize them after. Camera continued to work until the jocks decided that the geeky tech dude would be a perfect target for the ball...

My ENG rig of the 80's is heavier than the Sony PXW-FX9. The rest of the gear to support my camera was in a high top Van. The Sony PXW-FX9 XDCAM Full-Frame Camera System does more!

I wonder how fair dinkum the zoom setting on the camcorder microphone is?

Would like to see a teardown of the Miniware USB-C power adapter, find out just how dodgy it is.

I actually really like it when manufactures include all of the different plugs for PSUs as buying a good quality travel PSU from a local store can be expensive (especially important for general consumers) plus it can be useful when reselling the item later as there’s only 25M people in Australia that use our plug. If the plug connection was standardized and not manufacturer specific, I might have a different opinion.

Don't you normally have a number sign in front of the video number?

It's a Panasonic recorder, did they use Panasonic Caps?

Used to have Citizen Eco-drive, ended up being set aside as the insides of it needed replacing and official importer of it couldn't get one. Sad moment as i really loved the titanium watch.