Those cameras were likely broken. CCTV was mostly crap back then. The old monster cctv cameras had tubes in them, before ccd's and so on. They had a habit of bu

Those cameras were likely broken. CCTV was mostly crap back then. The old monster cctv cameras had tubes in them, before ccd's and so on. They had a habit of burning out, tube vacuum fouls giving blurry or little image, coax cable issues, etc. Even the CCD cameras were a pain as the recording tech was also crap. Recording was done on time lapse VHS vcr's which were really expensive costing around $1000+ USD at the time. And they only recorded one channel so you had to buy a costly multiplexer so you only recorded a few seconds of each camera losing all video between switching. Video was shoppy due to time lapse trying to record 24 hours onto one VHS tape. So after all this money was spent once something broke it was so expensive to repair they usually let it stay that way hoping the presence of a seemingly working CCTV system was enough of a deterrent. Most small mom and pop shops couldn't afford the repairs.