Delving further into the manuals I am having a play with both VRC-S & 128.
For some reason however the remote (doesn't matter which VRC) just loses sync with the VDAT for no apparent reason. All will be playing fine and then all of a sudden the time display will flash --:--:--:-- and everything grinds to a halt. On the VRC-128 all of the input and record lights flash once as this happens?