Recently, a member (love_to_stitch) sent out a plea for help here which concerned her camera and her PC. The thread began, and I started to throw in my "two-pennyworth", as we used to say. Finally, I told the lady I was going to PM her. The thread was closed.
Now, unfortunately, this has been misinterpreted. All I actually said was that I would PM her with one or two suggestions. This was not "secret methods of fixing a camera"! What might have been involved was the exchange of private addresses, which did take place. These forums are public after all.
As many of you know, after early retirement from teaching and a year's rest I went to work for a camera retailer. One of my special fields was thorough checking of a camera brought in for repair. It's surprising how often I'd find user error, even when the camera had been owned for 6 months or more. So I am more than used to analysing camera faults.
Forgetting the PC side of things, having established that the camera in question was one of the later Kodaks, boasting a Schneider Kreuznach lens, I wished to see the camera. I had been unable to find a workshop manual for it online so could not analyse from the circuitry/schematics.
I asked simply for the camera as I have plenty of SD cards and half a dozen batteries to fit; it's quite a common one.
OK...so the first question is how does a camera tell that a card is present? If you have an SD card to hand, check it over; if not take a look at an online pic.
The thing to notice is the slider switch. In the up position the card may be formatted and written to. The down position protects the card from both functions. I've had customers complain that a camera is not working when...yes, you've guessed it. They moved the switch without even knowing it was there. I've also found cards with a sloppy switch that fell to the protect position by default.
Let's assume all is well with the card and it has been placed in the camera. The camera now has to determine where the switch is. There are two basic methods, one involving a small LED which reads the gap, and the other involving a small spring loaded microswitch which drops into the gap if free...and does not if protected. This is is mechanical detection. Fluff/dust can cause problems here.
With the camera in my eager hands, I put in a card and a battery. It behaved as I'd been told...wanted me to format the card and then failed to format it.
I removed card and battery, and fired some compressed air into the side of the card slot where any microswitch might have been. I then slapped that same side of the camera with my finger tips and replaced card and battery. Success!
I hope you see how complex the electronics are here! It's a simple mechanical fault....
Further testing has shown that the spring has failed. If the fault returns, a couple of finger taps put the switch back in position.
It might have been a motherboard problem, in which case it would have been a write-off unless it had been possible to find a "non-worker" with a different fault (I shall not go into them all!) There were several models using the same motherboard
I am currently going through all the features of the camera, but do not expect to find any other faults.
While thinking of SD cards, and memory in general, do be suspicious of "bargain" cards; do not waste your time putting it in a camera or into a card reader to check its size. Your OS will tell you what the internal control chip says which may be far from the truth.
People often buy very large capacity cards and use only a small part of the card before they download. They can go for months or years without realising the card is bogus. You find out when the card merrily carries on taking pics on your once-in-a lifetime trip...and you find all the early pics have been overwritten. Very simply it is possible to buy a 256 Mb card that tells you it is 10 Gb. (figures are variable).
How do you find out? There is plenty of software (free) to tell you. URL follows for some:
https://www.geckoandfly.com/22803/de...ards-ssd-disk/
Such cards cannot be sent through the post legally as they are counterfeit. If you complain to the seller and he asks you to return the card for a refund....this too is illegal! (Think about it!)
The same is true of flash/thumb drives, etc. So do please be careful! I'd rather a seller unpacked the card to test it than sold me a fake card, even in good faith.
I hope this has been of use to somebody.....If your camera suddenly demands a format and then fails to do so...do not throw the card away. And always have at least one spare!!