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READERS WRITE - ON JAMCAMS
PART 3

Brian Grainger

brian@grainger1.freeserve.co.uk

I acquired a JamCam 3.0 in a Windows XP computer package I purchased in 2001. I recently used the camera and have been unable to download the pictures. I have followed most of all of your wonderful advice, (see previous article), and spent a lot of wasted time installing and uninstalling and connecting to different USB ports and serial ports.

I even got the JAM Cam 3.0 through the serial port to almost download. It said it was downloading pictures 1-28 and then it kept saying there was a fatal error message and shut it down.

If anyone can help, please e-mail any suggestions. Sine this camera came free with my computer I will probably try to download the pictures and get replace it with one that works.

Thanks,
M.S.

Thanks for letting me know of your experiences and I am sorry you have not got the JamCam to work.

I am intrigued that when you tried to download via the serial port you suggest it may have downloaded 1-28 but no further and then crashed. It is almost as if there is a limitation on the number of pictures you can download. If you can selectively download I would try downloading a few, deal with them and then download another lot, until eventually you have got the lot. Of course if you cannot selectively download this option is not available. Maybe the pictures are lost. It may be worth deleting them, then just taking one or two test pictures and then see if you can download the smaller number this way. If so at least the JamCam is not useless. It just has some limitations you have to abide by.

If any of you readers have anything further to add please let Mary and myself know.

Ken Ross writes with a few notes:

First, 2 sites which allow download of Jamcam drivers for the PC.
http://thejamcam.com/
http://targetweb.nl/driv/meddriv.htm

Now, a problem that happened to Ken a couple of times - Partial downloading of pictures taken.

• switch off camera - remove expansion card
• download the pictures stored in the camera
• delete them from camera
• switch off camera - insert expansion card
• the pictures on the card should now be accessible

Finally a note for Arctic explorers:
When the camera gets really cold for a longish time, for some reason the pictures come out in a skewed format.

Ed Rossi writes to say:

I have a Jam Camera and was looking for updates on the drivers. I came up with this site that has the drivers for XP. I downloaded them for future use but at present still using Windows 98se.

http://www.shoptronic.com/jam30800x600.html

Katie Smith writes to say:

Very many thanks for info about XP and Jamcam camera. As suggested, I plugged in the serial connection and the pictures downloaded to the new XP computer. The pictures were saved automatically to C drive. The downloading is much SLOWER this way, but at least the camera won't have to be thrown out. Very many thanks for all your help. Katie from Worcester.

Ken Ross writes to say:

I've got a cheapo MP3 player than can double as a SD card reader, so I've got my hands on a 64MB SD card that'll work with my Jamcam.

Yes the Jamcam can use a 64MB card, giving you:
253 * (640*480) pictures, or 858 * (320*240) pictures

but....

The camera battery has to have a lot of capacity to use it. At least my tests seem to indicate this using a standard 9V Ni-mH.

The card can't be used in a card reader due to Jamcam formatting, so the Jamcam program on your hard disk has to be given every bit of RAM available to download that many pictures.

An external battery pack of some sort maybe a workaround to the limited the battery capacity?

An external PSU might be another way, if using it to make stop frame animation.

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