Quote:
Originally Posted by KentTeffeteller
Wise operators who knew these machines could troubleshoot the TCR by listening to it going through the cycle, and know when it was going to have a meltdown.
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Yes you are correct! I ran master control and the pit for years with a TCR. Later in it's life it developed some quirks, one of which was to not eject the first cart in the break and then it would keep playing the first two carts over and over again. Another quirk was the arms would come down but then wouldn't pull the cart into the tape threader. So if we were quick we could eject the first cart from the machine, while the belt was on the move (tricky) and then "help" the belt move forward and load the next cart. For the problem with the arms we could literally push the arms down a bit and then stuff the cart in to load it. I left the door open in master control so I could "listen" to the TCR. We had the speaker on so we could hear the machine tones as it cycled. If I heard it doing something wrong I could fly down into the pit and fix it quickly. We didn't need a second machine for short spots in the breaks, like ID's, because the company bought the accessory in-machine recording editor. That thing was great, we could edit FRAMES! So if we had a couple of 10 sec spots and an ID back to back we could edit a single cart with the three spots and the ID.