Modding, and then sadly killing, the Panasonic NV-M5 camcorder (Part 2)

This is the second part of a series on my Panasonic NV-M5 VHS camcorder. If you haven’t seen the first part, click here!

Welcome back to my series on the Panasonic NV-M5 camcorder. Where I left off last, I explained that I wanted to basically gut the VHS mechanism from the camera to make it lighter, and because it didn’t work. So, let’s get to that!

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Tearing down the camera

Based on an excellent teardown of the camera, I believe it should be possible to extract only the VHS mechanism, and leave the optics assembly and mainboard intact.

I removed the screws and basically split the camera in half, trying as hard as possible to leave the optics untouched. The camera was mostly unscathed, although I believe I did damage some plastic and also broke the battery door. Nonetheless, after disassembly, I did confirm it still powers on. Here are some shots (click to see the full image):

Based on the names of these ICs, I did some digging and eventually stumbled across a field service manual for the Panasonic NV-M5 on archive.org, available here (which I’ve also mirrored with OCR here). This is an absolutely incredible find, and I’m immensely grateful to archive.org user Sketch the Cow for uploading this back in 2021 - without them, this likely wouldn’t exist on the internet at all. This is an extremely high quality and high resolution scan, which although it makes Okular (my PDF viewer) lag like hell, I am very grateful for.

This document is an absolute goldmine for this camera, and shows how awesome and relatively easy to repair things were “back in the day”. As opposed to the patents, trade secrets, plastic shells and “no user serviceable parts inside” disclaimers of today, this document includes entire schematics for every PCB in the camera!!

Based on the service manual, it appears that the chip marked “MN15862VEN” (above) is the main processor that drives the camera. It’s either a fully custom ASIC (wouldn’t be unusual for the 1980s) or a general purpose CPU. If it is a general purpose CPU, I haven’t been able to find the ROM chip yet, so I’m unable to dump the program. It’s possible that the program is stored in some internal ROM, since the manual does label it as a “microcomputer”, which implies it’s at least somewhat programmable.

In any case, this camera was clearly designed to be repaired and maintained. It’s full of pluggable connectors, and the manual even advises you to disconnect and reconnect them during the teardown procedure. I’ve said it before, but this is such a breath of fresh air from almost all modern electronic shite that intentionally lock you away, it’s awesome. I wish more stuff was built like this.

Later on (after the event I’ll describe below), I was also able to extract the board attached to the front panel, which kind of dropped down. It’s attached via a flat flex cable.

I’m not sure what’s under the metal box, but I think it might a Faraday cage of sorts, so I’m expecting some type of RF components. Alternatively, it could be the HV components that are used to drive the CRT viewfinder.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled reading…

OK, so basically, I fucked up. Biiig time. In what can be described as a minor logistical error (read: I dropped the bloody thing), I killed the camera. The story is more or less that as I was transporting the camera around in its half-disassembled state, I neglected to consider the fact that the handle of the camera was barely attached to the body. This is the cause of the logistical mishap, and more or less, once this malfunction had occurred, the camera immediately started smoking. I’m not sure if the magic smoke comes from the IC itself, which seems to be intact, or if it came from a nearby fuse/cap; but in either case, it no longer powers on and does not output video anymore 😭

Look, I’m not going to joke around. This is a fucking disaster. I feel really bad for killing a once-in-a-kind historical artefact. Yes, the NV-M5 is not the rarest historical artefact in the world, but the fact that it’s a vintage camcorder no longer being manufactured means that this one is permanently dead; there are no replacement parts and another one will not be manufactured ever again.

With the camera fully dead, I decided to partake in some more aggressive disassembly, since there was minimal chance of it being re-assembled intact. There is a chance that the smoke came from a blown capacitor or something like that, but the internals are extremely complicated and my electronics skills are very (clearly), so I decided it was best to proceed on the disassembly rather than hold off on the off hope I can repair and reassemble it.

More internals

Prying further, I was able to disassemble the camera in its entirety, and extract the VHS tape inside, which was in perfect condition.

With the VHS tape extracted, I booked an appointment at my local library’s media station to try and see if I could find anything on it. Unfortunately, either the tape is empty, or the media station is broken: I just got a blank signal. I’m leaning more towards the media station being broken, as it wouldn’t play VHS tapes that the library had on hand that were known to work. This was back in May 2025, so I’d like to head back to the library and see if their tape reader is in order now.

Moving forward/future plans

So, what can we do now? Clearly, I have a lot to learn. This exercise has been more or less a colossal disaster, and I sincerely apologise for destruction of this old device. I will do better, and take significantly more care, in the future.

Anyway, I’m hoping to make the best out of a bad situation. I’ve kept the most important components of the camera, and in the future, plan to take scans of the PCBs, and most importantly, decap some of the ICs. This camera has very rare ICs on it that implement custom logic functionality, are manufactured with a legacy process node, and likely have never been decapped before - making them an excellent target for decapping. I don’t have the necessary safety equipment in my flat to deal with the dangerous chemicals used in IC decapping, plus I have no experience, so I might see if I can work with my university’s chemistry lab to decap and image the dies safely.

In any case, stay tuned! This project isn’t over yet.