anybody dealt with a camcorder tape mechanism error?

dpopiz

Diamond Member
Jan 28, 2001
4,454
0
0
my friend just gave me an old sony Digital8 (dv recorded onto Hi8) camera, but the tape mechanism has some problem. It loads normally if no tape is in, but when I insert a tape and click in down the camera starts beeping wildly with an error code on the screen asking me to eject.

(in case you're interested, the error code is C:31:30)

anyway, tape mechanism probs seem to be common, so I'd love to hear if you have a story of how you fixed one such problem (any make any model) cuz I'm just trying to get ideas of what to try.