In many places, it would have been the last tape format in use. So it is perhaps understandable that [ldursw] decided to recreate an obsolete and unobtainable IC to save a Sony broadcast-grade editing Video Tape Recorder (VTR). Some sluthing found that a sync separator IC– that separates the sync pulses that keep everything moving together, if the name didn’t give it away– wasn’t behaving correctly. Luckily, the concept of a sync separator hasn’t quite given up the ghost, and another part was available. This reminds us a little bit of a tape deck repair we featured previously, reviving another Sony format– D-1 tapes–to archive old media.