Packard Bell DSC-400 camera.

Might get it here :

You might have to register to actually get it but IIRC it's free. The probl em is if the thing is old your OS might be too new. Also, as with any downl oad site watch what you click, alot of them are pushing these "download man agers" which are uselessware and are just one more thing you don't need clu ttering up your computer.

Did you try just hooking it up ? Newer versions of Windows might just have the drivers or generic ones that'll work well enough.

I have two older digital cameras that I never bother to plug in, I just use the memory cards. If yours has a memory card you should be able to use it that way if all else fails.

The exe file there is the installer for a toolbar.

Fuck that place. I did get some drivers there at one time, but I'll just co nsider it another thing that has gone by the wayside. Driverguide is dead. I als went to camera-drivers and all their links are to some googlead thing .

Here is the deal then. If XP doesn't have the drivers, obtain a firearm. Ta ke the cameraa and a firearm to a safe shooting place and show it what you think of it.

The only other thing possible is to see if you can find an FCCID number on it. One thing pieceofshit dot com did mention was that it is apprently buil t by NEC. Maybe if you hot their model number you might have better luck. P ackard Bell was an infamously dick of a company.

The PB wasn't the best camera in the job lot - there was an optical zoom one that wasn't missing any vital bits.

Maybe if I had the PB drivers etc I would have stuck it on a small tripod and used it for single shot capture, sometimes I send projects to electronics magazines, if I don't include a photo with the schematic, they don't believe I've actually built it.

With other (and some better) cameras, I'm not going to climb an uphill struggle to get the PB going - it'll probably add to the clutter for a while, meanwhile I could keep an eye on the hack forums in case anyone has published details of hacking the LCD panel for a PIC or AVR project.

Doesn't it use a memory card of some type ? If so you should be able to jus t use it that way no ? I have two older cameras which all I do is use the c ards. One of them is the old old card and it doesn't work in one of my PCs so I have to go in the basement and transfer the files to a USB stick, but it is still usable.

Another thing I noticed is that the drivers appear to be for 98. If XP does n't have them, you might be screwed anyway.

I have this absolutely wonderful Visioneer 6100B flatbed scanner I would re ally like to have working but it just won't in XP. There are no drivers eve n though the company seemed to be around. I even have the disk but it does me no good.

Even though the resolution of the scanner was not more than usual, it could scan at depth. Things did not have to be right on the glass. I scanned gun s, car parts, my face etc. I haven't seen one work so well since. (I even t urned it up on it's side once and took a picture of my.....nevermind)

Too bad there's no money in backward compatibility.

Oh, and I noticed driverguide is history. So much for that.

It had a 2Gb SD card - which I nicked for one of the better cameras.

If I had the drivers and could hook it to the PC for a still capture device I can immediately see the result and maybe retouch if necessary. Not so easy with swapping a SD card to & fro.