Unusable Old Cameras

Published on November 28th, 2005

This weeks column in PC Magazine is about dead media and dead devices. Here are two cameras Ifound in the closet which I’d like to play with but neither can be used because of proprietary formats and weird data transfer cables that are lost.

The fascinating Agfa 1680 which took a remarkable picture. The Smart media card has a proprietary format I have not been able to crack (yet).

The Olympus D-300L. A camera with Internal memory only. Bad idea. And here’s why:

Lose this weird cable and the camera is useless. And even if you have the cable will the data transfer on XP or Vista?

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35 users responded in " Unusable Old Cameras "

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# 1 RTaylor said, on November 28th, 2005 at 11:30 am

John I assume you don’t have a cash flow problem, but all those products you received for review over the years and ebay could finance a nice Villa on the Med for a summer.

# 2 Edwin Rogers said, on November 28th, 2005 at 11:39 am

I have been through this recently, too. In my case it was a data aquisition card made for the Mac_IIfx. That 8 pin mini-DIN looks a lot like the ADB serial socket used on old G2 Macintoshes – these computers are available for the price of a USB cable. If you managed to rig an ADB to USB serial cable, there is no guarantee that the discovery protocol will identify and capture the camera.
You can buy a very nice 35mm Nikon or even a large format Bronica or Hasselblad camera, second hand, for the price of a digital camera, nowadays.

# 3 Sid said, on November 28th, 2005 at 11:39 am

I have a company-owned Agfa 1280 that looks just like that one. I did get some great photos with it though often they had a gold cast to them for some reason.

# 4 Terry said, on November 28th, 2005 at 12:49 pm

Is this the cable you need for the D-300L?

# 5 site admin said, on November 28th, 2005 at 4:29 pm

Taylor, I’d be spending all my time working on eBay rather than looking at products and writing commentaries. Items like these I’d just as soon keep for reference or give to a museum eventually. Everything else becomes rather worthless quickly. And much of the stuff has to be returned although I’m often baffled why some companies want anything back at all once the packaging is wrecked and the product used.

# 6 ranron said, on November 28th, 2005 at 4:43 pm

sorry john, but that alfa looks like junk… who designed it? it appears to be very awkward to use even if the pics are good. if you can’t afford a new camera, i would happily send you one for the holidays…. =D

# 7 Kevin said, on November 29th, 2005 at 10:11 am

John,

Both of those cameras work well with the Apple Newton

(http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/newton-faq-hardware.html#IIB9)

That ought to tell you something!

# 8 Paul said, on November 29th, 2005 at 4:42 pm

DAT tapes, old floppies, 12″ reel to reel tapes, DDS-120 in old windows backup format, and who knows what else is lurking in the closet.

What about the media/format used today to store photos? Will there be a system that our grand kids will be able to view them on?

Do you have any recommendations for LONG term storage?

# 9 User said, on November 29th, 2005 at 6:18 pm

“sorry john, but that alfa looks like junk”

The lens on the camera is probably better than the lens on most

# 10 digginDvorak said, on November 29th, 2005 at 7:46 pm

Agfa ePhoto 1680 1.3 Megapixel / 1.9 Megapixel
eBay item # 7562731060
sold for $52.01

# 11 Kevin said, on November 29th, 2005 at 7:48 pm

I worked with one of those, the olympus, in my Art class in High School (3 years ago). Awful pictures, a webcam might beat that camera. It held no pictures to be worth it, and I dont think it even had an LCD… you had to use a PC…
ouch… just ouch…

# 12 Mike Keeler said, on November 29th, 2005 at 8:46 pm

It’s amazing that film has been around for so long and is still compatible with many systems. If you had a negative, you oculd easily get a copy of your picture made. Within the last decade we have had so many new technologies come and go and if you lose a cable, you’re hosed.

# 13 hugh crawford said, on November 30th, 2005 at 12:10 am

The Olympus D-300L data cable is that same as an apple serial cable. I can’t remember if it is the printer cable or the modem cable pick one and if it doesnt work, slap a null modem plug on it and that will fix it.
a couple minutes with Google will get you the software

http://www.camera-drivers.com/drivers/121/121379.htm

# 14 Franck said, on November 30th, 2005 at 4:24 am

I gather you’re looking for the cable and perhaps the software that would let you download the pictures from your Agfa digital camera onto your PC.
I have got both the cable and the Agfa Photowise software.
So if you’re still looking, give me a shout on my email address and I’ll send these to you.

# 15 Pierre said, on November 30th, 2005 at 5:25 am

I’m beginning to think that the best backup for digital photos is… 35 mm negative. If a company offered bulk transfer of JPG–to–35 mm for, say 5¢, that might be a viable business model.

# 16 Pablo said, on November 30th, 2005 at 10:07 am

I have an agfa1280. It has a beautiful lens. I purchased it because it could use an external flash and it had a real lens. It is only a 1.2MP yet the pictures look better than many 3MP cameras. I have noticed that many people who are digital snobs are not very good photographers. I hate it when a Computer magazine reviews a camera (and visa versa). The computer people usually look at the gee whiz featues and totally miss the photographic aspects (color saturation, lens quality, grain, etc).

Long term storage of digital images is a concern. I have negatives that my dad gave me from the 50’s and 60’s. I can easily get images from them. I hope that I can pass on the picture that are being taken today to my children. It would probably be wise to have them transferred to photographic paper (not ink jet). That way my kids (or their kids) can scan them into what ever media is available to them at the time.

# 17 Mike said, on November 30th, 2005 at 10:12 am

John,
We have the Agfa 1680 here at work and we use it every day. The SmartMedia card produces regular .jpg files that we read from a Belkin card reader. Even the back of the box says: “No file conversion – files saved in standard JPEG format” I know the largest card that will work is a 16 meg.

# 18 Dick Mason said, on November 30th, 2005 at 10:14 am

I have some old floppies: the big ones which really are floppy. How can one read these into a current computer?

If an old floppy disk drive were to show up, would it be usable? What could be used for a driver? etc.

Of course this problem will be appearing for the modern floppies, but that won’t be a problem for a year or two.

# 19 gromas said, on November 30th, 2005 at 10:33 am

Anyone ever hear of Bernoulli drives? They were Iomega’s first product circa 1982 – a 10MB removable disk that operated as a hard drive. A cushion of air protected the disk from the r/w heads, thus preventing head crashes.

# 20 Bill said, on November 30th, 2005 at 11:36 am

What really irks me off about dead media is seeing news video tape from the 70’s….

Spy Nixon, Ford or Carter and be amazed that the video (not film of course) from our lifetime is now grainy and colors have faded to a sublime black and white. Thirty years and this is what we have!?

Your point about the kinescope is wildly correct, because it captured the TV of the time on film. Watching it now, and it is fresh and of quality; while the video tapes after that era are disintegrating faster than celluloid ever did.

Will archeologists ever find a digital rosetta stone(s) for all the stuff we are creating? Will it matter if the bits get erased due to magnetic neglect?

Remember the Maxell commercial of the late eighties and early nighties where the robot finds the cassette tape, maxell of course, and is able to play it in what appears decades after it was created.

Uh-huh…Tapes don’t have that lifetime and the magnetics on the iron bits are fading…irony of course…

# 21 Seun Osewa said, on November 30th, 2005 at 12:16 pm

How can we convince technology buyers to boycott products that are designed with proprietary standards that are unlikely to last beyond a few product generations?

# 22 Anthony bucci said, on November 30th, 2005 at 12:43 pm

I might be mistaken but if my history is correct, the original “Ralph Nader’ – a writer from the 50’s by the name of Vance Packard – coined the phrase “planned obsolescence.”
It ’s all about money, of course, and we keep feeding the habit.
Standards would be financially counter -productive. And the bottom line must be met.

# 23 Dick Anderson said, on November 30th, 2005 at 6:13 pm

I still have my Olympus D300-L. It works fine with XP and yes, it does have a LCD viewer.

# 24 Ron Laisle said, on November 30th, 2005 at 7:26 pm

I am and will continue to lmao at all the geeks who think the latest 20 megapixel camera is the greatest thing since Cain slew Abel.I will be dust(along with all the digital crap out there today) for a long time before anyone invents a better way of taking pictures than we have with good ol’ 35mm film.The warmth,color,and feeling you get from film is just unbeatable.Same thing with my old fashioned “tube type” stereo amp.Digital whatever will never come close to the sound quality of them stodgy old vaccumn tubes.

# 25 BoolaBoola said, on December 1st, 2005 at 3:47 am

Not to be nitpicky, but Ampex was not the first to produce a video recorder. Actually, the first device for recording television broadcasts off the air was produced much earlier than this. And it was not invented in the U.S.
And there in lies the story of one of the great examples of dead media. It is so dead that few people are aware it ever existed.
It was made for use at home for recording television broadcasts. There was apparently one slight problem. The inventor hadn’t quite perfected a system for playing back the recordings.
However, amateur and professional historians are doing this these days.

# 26 Mike said, on December 1st, 2005 at 10:33 am

I backed up tons of data onto SyQuest removable disk cartridges back in the 90s, this before Zip disks and R/W CDs were widely available. Now, the poorly designed and manufactured drives have all failed, the company is long out of business, and only occasionally does one in reasonable condition show up on EBay. I still have the disks, forlorn and unreadable.

# 27 Anthony Buccino said, on December 2nd, 2005 at 7:12 pm

I have a big box of cables, connectors, computer parts, transformers and a hand held scanner that only worked marginally well when it worked and I expect to follow your lead and donate them to a museum someday. As for my two-year-old digital camera a Fujifilm s3000, the cable on it conked out six months ago and I switched to a card reader. Please tell me that all these JPGs will be readable 10 and 20 years from now on my CD, please, please, please!

# 28 Mark Stokols said, on December 3rd, 2005 at 10:30 am

I may have the cable (Olypus D-200L), if you really need one let me know and I’ll dig through MY archive (aka closet).

# 29 Scott Warner said, on December 7th, 2005 at 9:18 am

John I have a cable to the 1280 – i supect they are the same …. I will gladly end it to you if you want … no charge …. drop me a line and perhaps I may be of assisstance !!! cheeers and keep up the great work !!
S~

# 30 rachel said, on December 14th, 2005 at 11:20 pm

hi!
my dad owns an Olympus D-300L and is planning to take it to the philippines in the morning. the only problem is that the memory is practically full and i can’t download the pictures from my wedding off of it. maybe the program was erased or something, but its frustrating and we’re on a time crunch. can anyone help and tell me what to do or download before 3am today??? thankyou soo much!
-rachel

# 31 Greg said, on December 29th, 2005 at 2:11 pm

Perhaps I’m missing something, but why can’t you use the Agfa 1680? I bought a nice used one off of Ebay a few years ago, but it was missing the serial cable. So you just pull the Smart Card out and stick it in a card reader. Works great. Better in fact than the serial cable, as I have used a friend’s Agfa 1280, and downloading through the serial port is s-l-o-w.

# 32 Tan Wei Leong said, on December 29th, 2005 at 7:47 pm

that looks like a standard DIN-8 serial cable. Macs use it, but so did some Suns etc; basically electrically there’s IIRC no difference with the DB9/25 serial ports standard on PCs, just the pin placement/wiring.

RS-232C/RS-422

# 33 jbalaz said, on January 5th, 2006 at 6:50 am

The problems with video tapes (and a lot of audio tapes as well) is the binders that they used to secure the oxides to the backing. Somewhere in the 60’s they switched to binders that break down in a fairly short period of time, leaving you with nothing but rusty dust. Some of these tapes can be saved by baking them before trying to play them (don’t try this at home kids), but many are beyond help.
Consider that most of the older digitalmagnetic media is going to suffer the same fate, so the standard it was recorded in is probably irrelevant.

# 34 Taufik said, on January 19th, 2006 at 6:58 pm

I certainly doubt about long life of flash media. even today there are so many type that incompatible each other. we should forgetting this stuff and focusing all in just 1 more robust. NAND Flash is going there, i see. and Hard drive still life longer.

# 35 Joe McElroy said, on May 21st, 2006 at 4:23 pm

I have an Olympus D300l and love (ed) it. For $999 today as with any tech gadget you can buy mucho much more for your money. My son was using it and while i have the cable, i coudn’t get it to download with XP. Any tips from the poster who said it works with XP?

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