Hi Don,

Sorry for the slight delay in replying...

That depends on the nature of the "something" which "went
wrong". Sometimes (in a DSLR), it is something as simple as oxidation
of the contacts which connect the battery to the camera -- or oxidation
in the connectors between subassemblies. In either case, the fix is
usually cleaning and reassembly.

True, but dirty contacts could be a problem in either a digital or film
camera. And you can still take pictures with a mechanical film camera
when the electrical system is not working. You just lose the metering.


Well ... with a Nikon F there *are* no contacts in the camera
body -- unless you count the flash sync contacts. The metering is in
the removable Photomic pentaprism, which can always be replaced with the
plain optical pentaprism, or the waist level finder, and a hand-held
meter can be used.

True, but the F2 only keeps the battery in the body in order to make the
prism more compact. The metering is still in the prism. So I guess there
are four electrical contacts in an F2 body. Of the four Nikon cameras I
own (a Nikkormat FT3, a Nikon EM, a Nikon F2S and a Nikon F2A) I have
never had a problem with the battery contacts. The only time I've had a
problem with the battery contacts is with my SB-11 flash (which
incidentally I love).

Later cameras (even Nikon) depended on the batteries for shutter
speed determination -- except for a very few speeds (perhaps only one)
which was purely mechanical, so bad contacts pretty much cripples the
camera.

I believe the F3 was the first professional Nikon to have an
electronically timed shutter.

A long used film camera can have problems like worn bearings in
the timing gearchain -- which requires the abilities of a watch repair
person to re-bush the mechanism.

Which the right person can repair, without too much difficulty.


For the moment. The skill is being lost, with both mechanical
watches and mechanical cameras becoming more rare.

I get the impression that the repairers we're losing are usually the
ones who are less competent. So in a way, it's a good thing. There are
some great mechanical camera repairers out there today. The guy I send
my F2s to for servicing is a relatively new entrant in the business, but
his work and customer service are first rate. While they may become less
common, mechanical cameras and film are not going to disappear.

To give an example of another old technology which has not disappeared,
you can still buy gas lamps and mantles. In fact, the most endangered
items are likely older items of high technology. In a hundred years
time, I bet you'll still be able to buy gas mantles, but not SmartMedia
cards or Betamax tapes.

The
point I'm making is that in general a digital camera with a major fault
and no spare parts is much more difficult to repair than a mechanical
film camera with a major fault and no spare parts. But as I say, that's
a generalisation, and many digital cameras haven't yet reached the point
at which spare parts are no longer available.


Right. And I suspect that cameras which have suffered major
trauma (such as one D70 which was dropped over cliff) might still serve
as a parts donor.


I think computers are way ahead of cameras in terms of ease of repair,
because standardisation is so widespread.


That depends on whose computers. For the typical desktop PC,
yes. For some brands, such as Dell, they use custom parts which are not
interchangeable with other systems.

And for computers like my Sun Blade 2000 -- some things are
interchangeable with PCs -- the PCI bus cards. But other things -- as
simple as memory DIMMs -- are custom to The Sun Blade 1000, Sun Blade
2000, and the Sun Fire 280R (which all use the same system boards), and
they are not even usable in other Suns. Certainly things like the power
supplies are very different from what you would find in a typical
Desktop PC.

I have never really seen the point in Dell computers.


Nor have I.


But Suns are a
different story. My Sun knowledge is probably a bit behind the times,
but I would say that with a Sun, they are still more readily repairable
than a digital camera. Some parts are very widely available (disks and
CD-Roms, perhaps with the exception of FC-AL disks).


I've gotten quite a few FC-AL disks -- the Sun Blade 1000/2000
and Sun Fire 280R use them (among other systems). Mine have come from
eBay, from hamfests, and from stores which deal with used computers
(better prices that for standard SCSI or IDE drives, because the market
is smaller. :-)


Others are specific
to Sun machines, such as RAM and graphics cards,


Actually -- later machines can use either PCI framebuffers
(Sun's term for graphics cards), or UPA ones (which are specific to Sun
machines). I've used both in the SB-[12]000 machines.


but are not specific to
a single workstation.


Sun has abandoned the sbus and the corresponding form of the UPA
bus which your Ultra-2 uses in favor of the PCI cards for most things,
and the UPA bus for the faster framebuffers.

I have one of the PCI SCSI cards for an Ultra 60 lying around, waiting
to see if I ever get chance to use it.

Only the system board is really specific to a
single machine. And there's quite a lot of documentation available
regarding spares, their part numbers and how to fit them. Personally I
would much rather try and fix a Sun workstation than a digital camera.


But the Sun workstation is heavier to move -- especially if you
have a 19" CRT monitor on top of it. :-) (That was what really motivated
me to move to LCD monitors, since every time I wanted to change
something in the Ultra-2 I had to lift that heavy monitor from on top of
it and find someplace to put it. :-)

True enough. A few years back I was given one of those monitors and I
carried it about 1/4 mile home. It nearly killed me :-).

Actually, my Sun Ultra 2 (which I am using to type this) looks like it
needs a repair of some kind. The clock doesn't keep time when the
machine is switched off. I had this problem with another Ultra 2 and
thought it was the NVRAM battery. So I bought a new NVRAM and within a
week or so the machine died completely,


New from Sun -- or from an eBay or other used dealer?

I got it from an electronic component supplier in early 2006. I sent it
back for a refund when the workstation died.

Note that the company which actually makes the chips (CMOS
NVRAM, battery and clock all in a single package) have changed the chip
slightly, and it no longer works with the Suns. Sun was depending on a
behavior which was not in the specs, and the updated chip no longer
behaves that way. Newer systems now work. And the Sun Blade [12]000
machines now have a coin cell in a clip on the system board to run the
clock, and use a serial EEPROM instead of the CMOS.

A separate cell is a great idea. I guess at the time the Ultra 2 was
announced, no one cared about the cost of a new NVRAM in a £25,000
workstation.

Note that you can find information on the net on how to carve
into the clock/NVRAM chip and wire on a new battery. Before you reach
this point, however, you want to make a record of the hostid and the
ethernet MAC address, as they are stored in there as well. Then you
need to write a fcode program into the NVRAM and use that to update
those two values, because the system does not normally give you access
to them. All of this is documented on the net. The first three bytes
of the hostid *must* be right for the OS to know where to find various
devices in the system.


presumably of a fault on the
system board. So this time I think I'll wait a week or two. Actually, I
might just buy a whole Ultra 2 for spares, as they're so cheap now.


If you like the Ultra-2, you will probably like the Ultra-60 as
well. It will use the same disks, and will handle slightly faster CPUs
(450 MHz instead of 400 MHz). But it will no longer use sBus cards --
instead they are replaced with PCI cards for most things, and UPA cards
for up to two of the Creator-3D framebuffers. (Note that certain of the
Creator-3D framebuffers will not work with 300 MHz CPUs, but will work
with the faster ones.) It also uses the same DIMMs, up to the same 2GB
maximum RAM. The Ultra-60 is a tower style case instead of a thick
pizzabox style, and it can handle SCA disk drives which are 1" high or
1.6" high. Otherwise, you can probably move your existing drives into
the Ultra-60 and just boot them there. It is easier to remove the cover
(a side panel on the Ultra-60, instead of a large flat surface on the
Ultra-2), so you are unlikely to have a monitor blocking access when you
want to change other things.

I like the Ultra 2 a lot. I also need to economise at the moment, so
sticking with the Ultra 2 is a good idea. Also, it means I still have a
use for my Ultra 2 spares. Thinking about it, I have the NVRAM from my
last Ultra 2 that died. I thought the NVRAM was the problem, but perhaps
it wasn't. I might swap the chips and see what happens.

Also, as the Ultra 2 is a fairly slow machine by modern standards, it's
good for programming. If my code runs fast enough on the Ultra 2, it
should be fine on modern machines.

Oh yes -- older DVD ROM drives in the Ultra-2 and the Ultra-60
won't boot from a DVD -- until you apply the firmware upgrade to move it
to the "1009" firmware version.

'TOSHIBA ' 'DVD-ROM SD-M1401' '1009' Removable CD-ROM

Of course -- the Sun Blade 2000 moves you to FC-AL drives, but
it also allows you to get up to two 1.2 GHz CPUs, and up to 8GB of DIMMs
in a single tower case.

eBay auction # 150309907711 looks pretty nice at $99.98 for:

Sun Ultra 60 2 x 360MHz, 1024 MB, 2 x 18.2 GB HD

Ultra 60s seem to be about twice that price here. I think you get better
deals in the US simply because you have access to more sellers.

other than the slower CPUs. Looks as though it is pre-loaded with
Solaris 9 -- though you might not be able to use it without reloading
it, if the root password has not been reset.

eBay auction # 390007912100 is a nicer system (max speed CPUs,
max RAM)

Sun Ultra 60 Workstation 2x 450MHz 2GB RAM 2x 36GB HD

Either system (or one found closer to you) will use the same keyboard
and mouse that your Ultra-2 uses.

If you go to a Sun Blade 2000, you have to change to USB
keyboard and mouse.

The Sun Type 5 keyboard is the best I have ever seen. I have heard that
the later keyboards are less solid. I don't want to lose that great
keyboard.

One of the things no longer available from Nikon (and the supply
from the people who bought the stock from Nikon is small and dwindling)
are the aperture rings for many of the lenses. The old Nikon F used the
half-moon clip on the aperture ring to couple to the Photomic
meter/pentaprism assembly. Newer cameras instead require special cuts
in the raised ridge at the back of the aperture ring to couple such
information into the newer cameras -- or to clear sensor levers on
cameras like the D70 which use it to check whether the aperture ring is
set to the smallest aperture (numerically largest), so the auto aperture
control can work properly with the chips in the later lenses. There are
a number of replacement aperture rings for older lenses -- but not for
the oldest, so you have to set up to machine the ridge in the proper
places to use the lenses on newer cameras -- including film cameras such
as the N-90 -- a rather nice film camera with lots of features. I have
two of them which were modified by Kodak to serve as digital cameras for
the AP (Associated Press). This is where I first learned about the
modified aperture rings.

Someday I plan to make a fixture to allow marking of aperture
rings so I can mill the rings in the proper places, so I can use my
older lenses -- including many of the fluted focus ring design.

It sounds like you have owned your Nikon F system from new, or fairly
new. I got into Nikon manual focus cameras when they were already fairly
old,


Got them when they were already fairly old -- but I could
*afford* them. :-)


so I've chosen lenses that are AI or AI'd using the official Nikon
replacement aperture rings. AI conversions vary quite a bit in their
neatness, and I know that the Nikon conversion rings are perfect, so I
go for them. But maybe I'm just fussy :-).


I would if I could. Here is where the rings are now -- no
longer at Nikon:

http://www.pacificrimcamera.com/

Click on "Catalog" on the left, then scroll down to Nikon, and click
there, then down to "AI Conversion Kits" and click there.

I wait for lenses which have already been converted using the official
Nikon part. They do come up for sale occasionally. But as I've always
owned an AI system, I fortunately don't have a collection of non-AI lenses.

As you say, the most popular replacement aperture rings are in short supply.

There are a lot fewer kits now than when I first found them, and
I discovered that of those which were for focal length and aperture which
I had, I was excluded by the serial number, so I could not usefully
order *any* of the kits. So -- it is something which I have to do
myself -- or to pay someone else to do in a way which might not satisfy
me. Note that even the best uses a stickon label to allow the F2 to
read the aperture into the viewfinder -- but since I don't need that
feature, I'll skip that part. Just mark where to cut, mount on an index
head, and mill away what I need to remove, then go for a flat black
paint which will grip the brass of the rings.

I know. The stick-on label is one of the things which bugs me about the
conversions.

I presume that High Street is a location in London where there
are many camera stores -- as you can find in locations in New York City.

In many English towns, the actual name of the main shopping street is
"High Street". So it has become a generic term for the main shopping
district of a town. I think your equivalent term is perhaps "downtown"?


More often simply "Main Street", which is understood even when
there is no such named street. :-)


I was referring to buying film from pharmacies, not camera stores. There
are very few camera stores near me. Some camera stores have good prices
for film, but pharmacies are always overpriced.


Of course.


Perhaps you can still buy it *because* it is still there -- as
new-old-stock. Have you checked the expiration dates on the boxes of
film? :-)

I don't know. I've never used 110 film and probably never will. I just
read somewhere that Kodak are still making it, as of a few months ago.


O.K. I'm trying to remember whether the 110 was the cartridge
used by the Instamatic cameras, or the much smaller one which was later.
Kodak made the Instamatic cameras in large quantities, so I guess that
they feel a need to support them.

I think Instamatic cameras used 126 film. 110 film comes in a small
cartridge which looks like a pair of spectacles from above. It was
popular in the '80s and possibly earlier.

O.K. Can your computer zoom in to small areas of the image? In
a building to the right of the image there are seven illuminated windows
along the top floor which have a bluish tint. Select an area which
includes the central window, and the walls to either side, but stop
before the windows to either side. Now expand that selected area to
fill your screen. You will see pixelation of the illuminated center of
the window which appear to be larger than the surrounding grain. this
is because the JPEG algorithm is trying to minimize the number of zones
in which it needs to keep track of unique colors. Crop out a similar
area of the midway between lightest and darkest of the sky and I seem to
find smaller artifacts there -- perhaps because of more grain in that
area.

Are you talking about a pattern of squares in which the squares are
larger than the pixels?


Yes.


I've seen this in highly compressed JPEGs
before, but despite looking several times cannot see it in the area you
mention in this image.


Hmm ... I see them both with xv, and with "the GIMP".

I honestly still can't see a pronounced pattern. I can see one or two of
the smallest fragments of patterns, but they look like they might well
have occurred by chance.

Best wishes,

Chris