I've found a nice little pal vcr made by Philips (hifi nicam "crystal clear video") .

Things i've identified
*It powers up but i can't load a tape in it, i suspect there is a problem with the timing on the gears
Probably a stuck tape removed by force (wouldn't be surprised). I don't see anything broken though

* The upper drum don't spin at all, requires lots of force to move it by hand
* Pressing on Eject actually powers up the deck but the power button don't do nothing(?!) (i checked the ribbons cables)

I'm open to suggestions

-- merged --

Some progress, found this video and he says basically check the 9 V regulator. Also check/replace the capacitors in the PSU If you have no drum rotation that's likely the cause.

My power supply is not exactly like in this video it seems, and me being far from a genius as far electric goes, i'm between a rock & hard place.

What kind of advice can you give me to check these "high voltage capacitors". I know they keep some charge (can be 100 volts!) even after the power is out, need to be discharged with a resistor i believe. What kind of resistor would i need ? Just gathering intel, for now. Thanks

If you can't even turn the drum by hand it could be something else, fixing potential electronics issues won't magically make it unstuck. Also that's a completely different vcr in the video so might not use the same voltage to run the drum motor.

Loading issues could be the typical cracked gear on this mechanism. That had happened on the VR900 I have which has a lot of hours on it.

Exactly, If the drum is stuck why are you looking somewhere else, fix the mechanical issue first, then move to the electronics which probably were damaged due to the seizure of the drum. Oh and by the way NICAM has Absolutely nothing to do with VHS and tape playback, I keep reading this from members all the time.

NICAM was essentially marketing branding for HiFi stereo on VCRs.

I fail to see what's so nice about this unit. I can understand wanting to fix a deck for learning, for nostalgia, whatever -- but not for actual tape playback in any serious way.

No, It was an audio digital transmission scheme for TV broadcasting over the air, Once decoded by the tuner into analog stereo then the VCR can record the analog stereo onto tape as HiFi track just like it would from a non NICAM channel. NICAM on the front of the VCR refers to the capability of the tuner to decode NICAM not the VCR part at all.

It was mentioned by Europeans members that it was a low fi digital audio, barely 64Kbps by todays standards and the stereo separation was horrible despite what it was capable of on paper, A VHF/UHF analog stereo was way better but broadcasters want to squeeze more audio channels for multi-language programing so they abused the scheme and didn't care about quality.

That's essentially what I referred to. It was mostly just marketing something you had no real control over. For a while there, weren't most consumer decks NICAM?

Correct, just the tuner output, NICAM wasn't recorded onto the tape.

Really? I always thought it was essentially the same as HiFi in quality. Hmm.

Still happens to this day. $150 for cable, and too many channels look/sound like crap. :depressed:

*I've removed the mech, moved the pulley by hand, the cassette basket load just fine all the way up (guides up) and unload just as well.

**I've taken the upper drum appart, lubed the shaft a little, it seems the problem was that it touched the lower part, now it move freely by hand, i gave it some room (~ 1mm). I checked the heads, to me they're good (but what do i know..)

***Sadly, nothing happens when i power up the deck, drum is desperately still.

Regarding Nicam etc i was describing the features of the vcr, don't make me an essay on this

I'm at the point i really think that's an electrical issue. The drum don't get the juice(or not enough) therefore don't spin.

When the drum seizes, the CP resistor pops to protect it from further damage, Look for that resistor and replace it. But I would be curios to why the drum seizes, that won't happen on its own, A brute shock or something broke.

@ Latreche34
Where can i find this CP resistor ?

In the service manual in the schematic for the video head motor. The link above does not contain a complete SM, only sample pages, If you can't find the free download you may have to buy it from a third party manual database.

@ latreche is there a good place known to you to buy the service manual ?

You can find it for free here:
https://elektrotanya.com/philips_vr7.../download.html
https://elektrotanya.com/philips_vr8.../download.html (Might be a better scan here but seems broken right now)
It's split between these two, the VR700/VR860/VR900 one only has a few things that were changed for those 3 variants compared to the VR800/VR805/VR850.

That's not a complete service manual, only few pages.

The second link has the rest as noted in the post and in the SM for the VR900.