A post house I worked at had an engineering department, sometimes the guys there would need to disassemble the scanners to replace heads. I used to marvel at the miniaturisation inside the scanner.
This deck must have been one of the last decks Sony made before everything went solid state. I know that in the early 2000's we still used DigiBetas (for UK terrestrial TV), but when I left there were active discussions to start bringing media in on hard drives and editing on Final Cut.

Colin, if you would like to know some short cuts or anything about the machine or format I would be happy to email you. There is a ton of things that this machine can do but also know there are formats that this model can't do. Like HQ or 1080P50 or 1080P59.97 or 1080P60. For those you will need a SRW-5800. The 5500 only will do SQ tapes. SQ has a compression rate of 4.1:1 and is 440 Mbps vs HQ is a compression rate of 2:1 and is 880 Mbps. That's why the model number is SRW-5800. SRW-5500 means that it can record HDCAM. They combined the 5000 from the SRW-5000 and the 500 from the HDW-500 to make the model number SRW-5500. I don't know if you know this or not but with Sony all of the numbers and letters mean something.

sorry about peanut good to see you back again

I’m sure the control panel detached in the same way as a digibeta panel, by loosening the two black end screws at either end of the control panel & then pushing them, to unclick the ratchets that are securing it, and then lift it up and out. These machines, given there complexity, were very reliable. We had 14 in use in 2010 (a mix of SRW-5500 & 5800). Sadly, the 2011 earthquake in Japan, which wiped out the ground floor of the Sony Tagajo tape factory, was the death kneel for this format & soon after, file delivery & tapeless workflows became the norm. An £80k VTR with options now seems to sell for less than a u-matic deck. Sad times

Colin, Good work, happy to help.

I feel your pain Colin

The machine looks cool !!!!

Damn I wish I was a YouTuber it would certainly help me to source parts👍😎

Watched. Liked. Hyped 👍

I “make work” like this for myself on a regular basis..👍

The machine does tell you what format the tape is. On the display upper right it has 3 rows of information.
Top row - System (how the machine is set up)
Middle row - PB (how the tape is formatted)
Bottom row - FC (how the frame convert is set up) that row works if the machine has tho optional Frame Convert board installed. (HKSR-5001 board). 5002 is for Digital Betacam playback. 5003 is for 4:4:4.

To make your life easier you can store different functions in any of the F keys. On the top page of the Home menu I have stored in the F8 key the System Menu and in F10 I have the Error Logger stored. Those are used all the time and it's a lot easier having them on the Home Menu. You can store any function in any F key on any page. If you like I can walk you through how to do that or you can Google it.

Also remember when you are changing the System Menu you always need to go into the Frame Convert menu (if the machine has the option Frame Convert) to get the machine to execute the change. Also if you Press the Shift button and hold it and press the F9 button it will bypass asking you are you sure and reboot.

If you really want to make your life easier you can store all of your settings for each flavor and then just recall the settings you need. I believe it's 10 different memories it has.

"It doesn't have a 'just find out whatever it is, and play it' mode" 🤣 ... At £100,000, you'd think it would! ... And you'd think it would make you a cup of tea, too!

Does it have a label, saying "$h1t's a SONY" 🤣

Glad you brought that brutal odd machine back to it's glory.
That apparent infinitum of digital formats and options, on a such non user friendly interface, comes in line of Sony and partners... needing to sell their expensive traning courses.
Cheers ♥️ 📼

I was going to say, 'What a great machine.' But, 'What a pain to use.' seems more fitting.

Nice repair. Good idea selling the old one to cut the cost of the second replacement.

Know these machines well.  I used to operate them on a daily basis.  You need to get hold of Techmoan's screen film peeling music - classic!

It should be easier to swap the entire control panel between your two machines, if you want to get the one with the bad pixel on the unit with higher hours. If memory serves, I believe if you loosen the front screws on the control panel, you can merely press in on the spots on each edge of the front of the control panel to easily lift the panel up and off the track. There is a release mechanism built in.

hi at last a cool  deck

i kind of did the same     i have a RS 1700

a spool came down hard on the  right side  motor  ripped  of  the reel holder  was bad  new's i had yo take out the reel motors  
i did  fix the deck    i was not help one  bit  

i am so carefull  now   when working  on gear

I found the the software on these very awkward. I probably needed an operational course at Sony if that was a thing. But it seemed poorly implemened😅

I was talking this weekend with someone from ITN and they have over 100k hours of VT to encode and not enough machines to do it. Old VTR machines are becoming increasingly sought after for conversion of VT to something new. So it's amazing you are saving something like this. Though TBH i think they need things like Umatic and Betacam more than the more modern digital formats.

Feel sorry for you lining up on recording format. It is deliberately not easy as changing the settings and getting it wrong could mean no tape to playout on tx. It was not so bad if you dealt with it every day as there were certain common format used by stations such as 1080p59.94 4:4:4. I admire you for your patience with machines and finding faults. I could never keep as calm as you do.