Due to my ignorance of the format, it almost cost me an expensive repair, Not knowing how the cassette locking mechanism works on the Beta format is the reason behind it. I'm posting it here so anyone can avoid such a mistake and a potential costly repair, I was lucky enough the total cost of the repair was little under $50 and about two hours of my time.
So what happened? I put in a Beta tape in the VCR that has a broken lid tab on one side. After extracting the loose piece from the cassette, I though it is safe to put it inside the VCR. Little did I know that those tabs are actually the reels' locks release for both the take up and supply one at each side, Image from google:
The tape went in and immediately after hitting play I hear grinding and popping noise, Ejected the tape right away and started the troubleshooting, I couldn't find anything obvious or visually wrong, So I shoot an e-mail to 12voltvids explaining what happened and he confirmed that my problem lies in the pendulum that drives the take up and supply reels' tables:
Took it apart and sure enough the pendulum main gear is shewed up from trying to spin the locked up take up reel, I did an online search and found a listing on eBay selling a NOS pendulum assembly however it is not the right part #, I took a gamble hoping it will fit, but unfortunately it is not the exact match, However I was able to swap the bad gear from the new pendulum to the right pendulum as they looked exactly identical, the rest of the assembly was fine:
The VCR works as it should now, The cassette got a new lid from a donor blank tape, And now I know how the brake release for the Beta cassette reels works. Ooooof!!
