>If you hear of a damaged/ruined digital camera (especially a Sony
>Mavica FD-series) which uses floppy discs, I am looking for one... I
>was given my work Mavica FD88 because the floppy drive failed.

Hello Andrew,

Even if you were to find a "spare" floppy drive that would fit (which
almost certainly would have to come from another Sony FD88), the
tech time required to replace it and the fact that the second unit may,
in short order, go bad, make replacement a risky proposition for a
camera that is light years behind current technology.

I understand your feelings; throwing away anything because a single
part malfunctions may seem like a terrible waste, but the current, third
and fourth generation cameras take far better photos, with much more
detail, and with huge amounts of inexpensive storage (Compact Flash
cards are on sale at many discount locations for about $39 for a 64
or even 128 megs of memory - the same holds true for the other three
popular formats).

A Nikon Coolpix 990 recently sold for a modest $210 on eBay. Considering
that unit's higher resolution (3.4 megapixels) and a lens that will focus
down to about 3/4 of an inch, trying to get by with an "it seemed like a good
idea at the time" camera really doesn't make very much sense. There
is a very good reason why Sony dropped the floppy disk format not long
after its introduction.

I could get into other technical issues and everyone would doze away as
I ticked them off, but the bottom line is that anyone serious about their
work would be better served by a camera that was not so obviously
designed as a budget model with limited storage capabilities. Anyone who
owns an FD88 will tell you it takes longer to write data to a 1.4 meg disk
than a modern memory card. You'd have to carry boxes of floppies if you
ever went on a vacation.

A second option may be to connect the camera to your computer via
whatever interface it uses (which may itself be limited, such as a serial
cable) and simply shoot uncompressed images direct to your hard drive,
though this would be impossible for field work.

Best regards,
Jim


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