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View Full Version : Works only with specific hardware...



crenn
01-31-2008, 09:55 AM
I love companies who make functions of machines only available if you buy some software or card.

I got a 'free' 7.1MP camera. It's an Olympus FE-210 which takes ok photos (not the best, but it's better than the other cameras I have) but when using the full 'quality' with internal memory.... I can literally take only 1 picture then the memory is full. So I need a xD memory card which I picked up today. I got a 2GB Fuji xD card and not an Olympus one (some of the functions of this camera is only available with an Olympus xD card because it has special 'software' on the card), and sadly no other functionality is unlocked but I'm greatful that I can take more than 1 image now. But I decide to do a little research into this problem to see if there is something to download to get the special 'software' onto my card. I found out that in the card header which the majority of devices can't read/write there is a little bit of data. In Olympus xD cards, this data contains everything you'd find in a normal xD card, however, there is something different at the end of data, this is literally what is that data written in HEX:

OLYMPUS#PAN_#2.0
Where as a normal xD card would have this:

_______#____#0.0
<Note: where the underscores are a space and the # signs are actually nulls - hex 00>

There is no special software for the extra features on that xD card, just those little bytes of data. I also found out it's possible to write that data into any xD card.

xmastree
01-31-2008, 01:24 PM
Nice one. Let me guess, you can now take multi shot panoramic pictures and stitch them together automatically?

crenn
01-31-2008, 05:46 PM
Funny thing is, the feature takes the pictures for a panoramic picture but you then have to use a program to stitch them together, but the olympus program looks for a little 'tag'

xmastree
01-31-2008, 05:59 PM
It does work though...
http://geocities.com/xmastree_ph/house/inside.jpg
(if that link doesn't work, go here (http://geocities.com/xmastree_ph/house/) and click the very last pic.)

crenn
01-31-2008, 06:06 PM
Yeah, the file I have (which is cropped and cleaned up) is 10MB!

But it does work, little disappointing sometimes.