Digital Photo Archaeology: featuring hardware DRM from the crypt

So I picked up this large boy from the MSU Surplus Store:

Sony Digital Mavica MVC-FD91 (c. 1998 CE) — yes, that’s a 3½” floppy drive on there

You get about 7 high-resolution pictures on a disk. And high resolution by 1998 standards means this:

1024×768 whole pixels: that’s huge! The camera is autofocus with image stabilization, so it was quite a nifty unit at the time.

Pre-dating EXIF, its image metadata is limited. There’s an external ‘411’ thumbnail file that looks a bit like this:

If you care to dig about in such an ancient file, I’ve got a matching image and its 411 file here: MVC-005X.zip. And manuals? Here: Sony_Mavica-FDC91-W0007229M.pdf

Most annoyingly, the camera really only likes real Sony batteries, or it shuts down with an “InfoLithium” battery error (swearies in link). As this battery format is now used in generate photo lighting systems and Sony don’t make it any more, this may be a camera that dies from DRM before anything else.

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