On Sat, May 29, 2004 at 11:27:00PM +0100, Tony Duell wrote:
A little OT
but certainly related: I had a 'camera' made by MicroMint
(Steve Ciarcia) made to work with an Apple ][. It was basically a
photo-eraseable EPROM and an adapter card for the Apple.
I thought it was actually a DRAM chip with a transparent top (the number
'IS32 Optic RAM' is sort-of in my mind, but I can't be sure). Light
falling on the storage capacitors causes them to discharge faster. You
fill the RAM with 1s, wait a little bit, and read it out. The cells that
read as 0s have had a lot of light falling on them. Then fill the RAM
with 1s again, wait a bit longer. The extra cells that read out as 0s
have had some, but less, light falling on them. Repeat for 8 or so times
(to get 3 bits/pixel).
I remember the article... I don't know if Steve Ciarcia used a commercially
prepared chip or not, but I still have a ceramic/gold-lid 4116 that I peeled
the lid off myself and replaced with a slide-cover. I never built mine
into a camera body, but I did do a few experiments where I had an Apple II
with the cover off and changed how much light fell on the DRAM. I saw that
the effect basically worked, but never wrote any software to do image
collection/processing.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 29-May-2004 22:40 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -79.8 F (-62.1 C) Windchill -128 F (-88.90 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 18.7 kts Grid 003 Barometer 665.5 mb (11176. ft)
Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov
http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html