Sony Mavica FD-83 Floppy Disk Camera Teardown - The Electronics Inside

[@a531016]

Apologies for the audio in this video, unfortunately I suffered a hardware failure duing filming that I didn't notice until the edit. As a result, the only consistent audio we could use was from and alternative of lower quality.

[@JB-mk4ry]

I couldn't make it through it. Sorry.

[@WinstonHacking]

Does anyone know how I would get video off of one of these and onto my Mac?

[@a531016]

@@WinstonHacking I would think a USB floppy drive should do you? I picked one up off eBay for £10 or there abouts?

[@WinstonHacking]

@@a531016 Ah ok, I'll just have to see which one is mac compatible, and then whether or not VLC can open such an old video file!

[@Pinkhair3d]

I have lots of fond memories of using one of these in high school.

[@MrGridStrom]

Yes me to, It was one of my first interactions with a digital camera. I only wish I had of kept the short videos, and photos we took with it.

[@robstammers7149]

This video is heart breaking, but so good to watch, don't usually watch tear downs, thanks fella.

[@jetjazz05]

We had one of these in my computer lab at school. The computers were old hand me downs from a local college, pentium 2s when pentium 3s were fresh so they upgraded. The camera was probably old by then too, this was early 2000s. Anyways very nostalgic to see, in fact I kind of had a dislike for memory cards for a long time because of the utilitarian nature of the floppy lol.

[@matchc0635]

This actually provided an insight if I had to repair one since I have a lot of Mavica on the way, and they are surprisingly simple compared to either modern digital and older consumer film camera, plus almost all of them are modular!

[@kruppin]

It's funny the sound was better with the old camera, but I guess it was recorded on something else. :D

[@a531016]

The intro audio was recoded on my normal lavlier mic, which then failed part way through recording, and we could only rescue the audio you hear. Apologies!

[@grodenbarg]

I had a chance to play with one of those cameras back in HS (class of 2000). Mavica was alright back then, it was the school's we were using as a class back then. BTW: My first camcorder I purchased was a Sharp Veiwcam HI8 camcorder back in 2000 as well. I am glad the days of analog are gone. LOL

[@a531016]

I think we can all agree analoge cameras are best left in the past - I'll leave the audiophile / vinyl records argument for others to have...

[@theoldone22]

I used one of those at work, we had the sony memory stick floppy adapter made specifically for the Mavica, with a driver it also could be used with Windows XP

[@andrewjensen]

I believe they also made a cdr version too although I’m not sure if it was a full size cdr or a mini disc. I remember the floppy version. Mostly, I love sed the 1.4mb discs. It made a lot of sense at the time and I used to carry floppy discs in my shirt pocket. I also remember an MP3 player that used higher capacity Zip drive floppy discs. I had a Zip drive too, although a zip disc only held 100mb and a cd held 700. The Zip drive was around the same price as a cdr, but the early cdr were very slow and zip and floppy were much faster. Flash existed, but was very limited in capacity and was super expensive.

[@RhombusLabs]

This was my first digital camera. Yeah the quality was awful but I took more photos with it than I had any analog camera before.

[@thayt1m]

Do you happen to have the part number of that lcd screen or know where could I buy a replacement one?

[@lostboytnt1]

the BEST floppy drive you could get, was an LS-120 drive. Yes, it had the ability to read/write a 120 meg 3.5" floppy (similar to a zip disk) "disk" but, it also was a high speed floppy drive, with no interrupt. (Anybody remember when a computer started reading the disk, the entire computer would freeze? that was because it was tying up an interrupt to read the disk) I used to buy these drives to use on my servers, and high end systems, so I could still use floppies, without crippling the computer it was on. Never really used the high capacity LS disks.

[@dykodesigns]

That is a super slimline floppy mechanism! I think the faster writespeed is probably achieved by using a custom floppy controller. Most PC’s all used the same design of controller chip. My memory of floppies is maybe a bit more favourable, in my experience they where reasonably reliable if you bought good brands and used them with some care. I have 30+ year old disks that still work fine. Granted they are brands such as TDK, Maxell, Verbatim and 3M. Disks that I consider bad where brands such as Memorex. Nothing but trouble with those🥶. I remember using one of these camera’s in the early 2000’s for a school project, our teacher had one. For the time it wasn’t bad at all but soon I got my own digital camera which had compact flash cards of 128 mb of storage. That was a cheap Medion branded camera from the Aldi stores.....

[@a531016]

128 Mb! Wow, that probably cost a fortune for the memory alone!? I am tempted to source annd tear down the first digital camera I had for a comparison - watch this space...

[@DrAaronFish]

Oh man our college got one of these and it was so new there were very few restrictions on it, so I'd borrow it for days at a time. The next year they started limiting how long you could check it out and I was almost certainly the reason why.

[@a531016]

Worth it! Do you still have any of the original photos?

[@DrAaronFish]

@@a531016 Probably, though I might have to hook up an IDE hard drive or remember my flickr login to get to them :D

[@a531016]

@@DrAaronFish Quick, get them backed up onto google photos before the 1st of June paywall comes in!

[@judgebigmansion3492]

I have a couple Mavica camera with easily replaceable CR2025 batteries for saving time and settings. However, I can't find where to replace the CR2025 on the FD83 model. Do I have to disassemble the camera to replace it's CR2025 battery?

[@xXDeltaXxwhotookit]

I remember the flash capacitor on an old film camera... still have the charging circuit around, I think - if I ever want to zap myself. (Not sure which is worse, the capacitor or the spark off a wind proof lighter)

[@mattsword41]

My school had one. Imagine the draw was CF/Smartmedia cards were expensive and was before USB common therefore needed proprietary connection cables. Floppies were cheap, ubiquitous and all PCs had floppy drives. If someone lost a floppy - no problem. Loose the memory card or connection cable ---> unusable until many £s spent! Also, files still quite small so could fit enough pictures on a disc

[@mattsword41]

(or those smartmedia to floppy disc adapters! They were weird!)

[@Titousensei]

320x240 video is not great now, but remember it's equal or better than a VHS tape! Back then your computer screen "high resolution" was 640x480.

[@Feslmogh]

I like the mini cd version better... more reliable and more capacity. Of course for have to close the disc to use in the computer...

[@a531016]

Could you use RW in them, or just R?

[@Feslmogh]

@@a531016 Both...

[@MAYERMAKES]

makes me want to sdo something with my collection of floppy drives and disks,,,,

[@a531016]

Floppy tron?

[@andrewsawesome]

My Casio WK-3200 musical keyboard accepts a SmartMedia card for data transfer. I wish I had gotten the model with a floppy disk drive, but my mom bought it for me used. Also, apparently floppy disks got less and less reliable the later they were manufactured.

[@tenj00]

Very fascinating, but you have a nasty echo in your audio-recording. Try using Acoustic Foam Panels and/or a better microphone.

[@a531016]

Unfortunately, my normal lavlier mic started to fail in the recording of this video, and we subsequently had to rescue the only audio we could. Apologies!

[@bushidobrown9857]

BLISTERING 500KB/SEC TRANSFER SPEEDS

[@limpfishyes]

Shocked to hear you think 3.5 floppies were ever unreliable. Far from it! There's a reason they stayed around so long. Sure they might not be as robust as modern solid state but with their chunky plastic housing and metal shutter they much more robust than the previous 5 1/4 generation. Your issue with a recent purchase is probably down to extremely old stock running on an old drive and who knows how dusty and misaligned that might be rather than the reliability of the floppies in general.

[@tenj00]

I agree I only had a problem with them in the early 2000's because I didn't buy new ones anymore.

[@amirpourghoureiyan1637]

A lot of 1.44 disk makers cheaped out in the late 90s, rarely you'll find a full box of disks work from then when compared to a brand new box of Single and Double Density disks. It was just a thing that happened with consumer magnetic media once CDs and DVDs took off, they stopped supporting it properly and you ended up with ferric cassettes and unreliable diskettes.

[@a531016]

My experience of Floppy Disks only really starts in anger around 1996, so I probably missed their hay day. I can honestly say I had a number of issues with them through time, so never loved them. But I guess my only comparison was newer media (CDR, flash etc). So compared to older hardware (5.25, casette etc) they may well have been an improvement.

[@mattsword41]

I found floppies very variable - some lasted ages, many died randomly and rapidly (talking late 90s)

[@EthanDoezYT]

I got bored recently and tore apart this camera because the one I had didn’t work at all.

[@a531016]

What did you think? Interesting insides?

[@EthanDoezYT]

@@a531016 I actually was rlly excited about some of the internals, I was wanting to keep the display screen for future uses but realized how hard that would actually be to do and I wasn’t sure what to do with the rest of the components so I kept the flash and the lens and the snap button.

[@SuperSmosh123]

I've got an FD90 and every disk I put into a it gives me a format error and comes out scratched to the point the magnetic disk becomes clear. Does anyone know how I can fix it?

[@DaveMcAnulty]

It should only take 48seconds to read a completely full 1.44MB floppy. Any slower, and you probably have your cheap USB floppy drive to blame :D

[@rev.joseph7631]

Logged on to find out what might be causing my Mavica FD 83 to say disk error when there was no disk in chamber, this tech was informative about the product but didn't describe anything close to my problem, continually talked about non-sense