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Question about digital camera drivers

emazur - May 4, 2003

		emazur		May 4, 2003
			I have a Probe 99 camera which i totally forgot about b/c until recently I was using a laptop and it didn`t have a serial/com port, which this camera needs in order to download picks. Anyway, I don`t have the drivers/sofware for this camera anymore, and the manufacture (Quark) is extinct I think and I can`t find the drivers/software anywhere online. Some I`m wondering if I can use some Generic driver (TWAIN I think?) and download the picture with Irfanview (file->select Twain source) or something else? Thanks for any help

		Tindo@heart		May 5, 2003
			GOD BLESS IRFANVIEW!! I just luuuv that image viewer! I recommend it everywhere I go. I've been using it for like 3 years or somethin' I also use it for a Canon S30 digital USB camara, and it works great with irfanview. You can either use "acquire" in the "file" menu to extract 1 picture. Or you can use "batch scanning" in the "file" menu to extract and save serveral pictures at once. Which I'm sure will be slow over a serial connection. Sadly, any TWAIN complient software is going to require the special camara TWAIN driver to talk to the hardware. Which means Irfanview alone is not going to recognize your camara. The new Irfanview 3.80 has a special feature just for digital USB camaras. BTW, I wish by default Irfanview enabled the "thumbnails" button. It's a great little sub-program that lets you view folders in a tumbnail view, OR you can just press the letter "T" in an active window of Irfanview as a shortcut. blah blah, you made a mistake by mentioning Irfanview. I can't say enough about it. As for your driver; search around Google with your camara's model number. If the drivers were ever posted on the net, chances are they are out there somewhere. Reply and tell me your model number and all that you can about the camara. I'll try to find the driver if you can't. Goodluck!!

		emazur		May 5, 2003
			Thanks for the reply. I`ve spent more than an hour searching for this stupid driver, but no luck. This is the camera I have: Probe... The link on that site to the manufacturer's site is dead.

		Tindo@heart		May 6, 2003
			I think your camara is a clone of a "Polaroidâs model # PDC 640" Which explains why it's difficult to find a driver under the "Quark" or "Probe 99" name. Check out this driver, there should be no harm in trying: http://www.polaroid.com/service/software/p...pdc64... It is a twain driver and 2.55 MB download. I got it from this page: http://www.polaroid.com/service/software/p...max/p... The camaras may look different, but I think the inards might be about the same. I think. Try at your own risk , but keep in touch with how it turns out.

		emazur		May 6, 2003
			I gave it a shot but it doesn`t seem to work. But thanks for taking the time to try and help

		Tindo@heart		May 7, 2003
			Forget my last post, it's all wrong. I've seached high and low for this dang driver, I usually can find every driver I have ever looked for. I've been to russian sites, and Pakistan sites and even traveled back in freakin' time! <_< From what I can gather; this company: http://www.megatrade.ru/Gallant/Company_In...nform... may be worth contacting. Does anyone know russian? You can try to email them, they might can send you a driver. Also, you might can try to call these telephone numbers here: http://www.motionnet.com/cgi-bin/search.ex...xe?a=... Or you can try the email addresses, though I seriously doubt they would work since the domain no longer exist. I also ventured back in time and was able to come up with this: http://web.archive.org/web/19991108192623/...ocapd... This page is really just a tease, because it's where you could download the driver back in 1999. However, it gives some very useful information. It tells you the filename is "twain.zip" and is 1.4MB I thought archive.org may have archived the actual .zip file, because I found it archived a directory listing!! http://web.archive.org/web/19991022030119/...com.c... ..but. No luck. So I took what information I found and typed in google "twain.zip probe" and it took me here: http://www.yusuf-abufara.net/capture.htm... and I thought I was lucky! It gave me a page identical to the timemachine's driver page of 1999. BUT! then I noticed the links. Some poor web developer directed the "a href" tags to the local machine. Basically, the URLs don't work! Oddly, the page doesn't work now. It was just working. So you might want to take a look at Google's Cache of the page here: http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:jeGEs...&hl=e... Lastly, I tried to do an FTP search for the file here: http://www.alltheweb.com/search?cat=ftp&cs...e=6&q... It only gave me 4 results, and I don't think none of these are your files. Good freakin' luck! I give up! This company seems to have dropped from the face of the Earth! I have gave you some good leads to contact people though, I would email people from all of the links. Especially this site: http://www.yusuf-abufara.net/capture.htm...

		emazur		May 11, 2003
			I really appreciate the time you've spent here (I think you`ve spent more time than I have) but I don`t thing anything's gonna pan out. I went to the drivers section of the russian site, but they had no drivers for the camera. I live far outside the US and I have a feeling making that call (if the number is even valid now) won`t get me anything but a long distance bill. I emailed that middle-eastern guy but I`m not expecting much (but I`ll report back if there's good news). I actually should have these drivers, but they must be buried in a box far away from me. I may ask may brother to do a quick search of my boxes, but I don't know if it`ll be worth it. I suppose I could always get a new (and better) camera...