It appears it may have been damaged in shipping, as there is a good sized dent in the side of the metal casing that doesn't appear in the listing photos. There was plenty of bubble wrap going around the unit, but less protecting the sides, and it was sent with a VHS tape resting next to where the dent was on the side of the unit. A good drop on the side could have caused that in shipment.
In any case, I decided to open the unit up and look inside to see what happens when trying to load a tape. I noticed that there was a pulley leaning, that looked like it shouldn't be leaning. I didn't get a before picture, but I got an after picture once the pulley popped back into it's guide on the right of it.
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Once that pulley was back in place, I plugged it back in and now it loads a tape just fine. So far it seems to play, ff, rew, stop, eject and load again. I noticed on the one old tape I tried, the TBC/DNR turned on seemed to cause tearing at the top of the frame which went away when turned off. But many tapes to test and stuff to read before I have intelligent questions about that.
The only other oddity I saw with the quick peek of the unit insides was one spring that appears "odd/wrong" to me. It appears that this spring is a non oem replacement, jerry rigged to provide the intended tension. Does that seem accurate?
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Since it appears that it doesn't protrude far enough to interfere with the tape, should I leave it alone? Should I try to find a suitable replacement? If so, I have no idea what the names of any of these components are (hence my request in my original post for a "vcr 101" type resource).
