The 8MM tape your friend gave you should have played without any problems on your 8MM camcorder. Was the tape housing damaged or was the tape itself creased or lined? I don't think there was ever an 8MM adaptor but Sony did make two video decks back in the mid 1990's, I owned one of them and it was very useful for fastforwarding and rewinding. I had some old tapes still lying about and wanted to transfer them onto computer for editing and burning to DVD, and after much searching for an 8MM deck to play them back on earlier this year I had to give up and buy a Canon V75Hi to act as a playback deck. Not ideal as it busted 3 tapes, it didn't slow down when rewinding like a playback deck would and yanked the tape out of the righthand reel. Thankfully I managed to sell that camcorder a few weeks ago.

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