I got a fun story. The NBC affiliate in New York City donated two late 50's video tape machines to my alma mater of St. John's University back in 2005. The TV/Film department , seeing no value in the machines, promptly took them to the dump. This is one of the many reasons why I do not like that crappy school.

How dumb was that? Good grief Charlie Brown.

I have owned a variety of quadruplex machines over the years. I have a AVR-1 that is going through the total restoration now. I also have BetaSP, MII, 1"C, and DVCPro. Gotta save what we can... too many are going to the land fill. I know of a tractor trailer half-full of early RCA quad machines that were "free" if you were willing to take the stuff in the other half of the truck. The other half was full of not-legal-in-the-USA microwave equipment. I suspect it has gone to the dump along with some really minty early RCA vtrs...

Here is a restored Ampex VR 1000 in Munich's Deutsches Museum (as of 2006).

http://i.imgur.com/vSdpSZ5.jpg

http://www.vtoldboys.com/VR1000_06.htm