On 2008-11-23, Christopher Tidy wrote:
Hi Don,
Sorry for the slight delay in replying...
That's O.K.
[ ... ]
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).
O.K. The primary problem with the Photomic and Photomic-TN
finders for the Nikon F is that they use two PX-13 cells -- mercury
cells which are no longer made. (Same for a rather nice digital caliper
from Brown & Sharpe.) At least I didn't pay list price for any of them. :-)
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.
O.K. IIRC, the first ones used electric timing for the slower
speeds -- no gear and escapement train to gum up in the lubricant -- and
I think that anything 1/60th or faster was mechanically timed then.
[ ... ]
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.
O.K. It will be interesting to see what the next ten years or
so brings. That young fellow may die of overwork as the others pass on.
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 mantles are becoming controlled -- because they are mildly
radioactive, IIRC -- thorium-232. Some manufacturer's sites have become
"Superfund" sites, so the availability of mantles may not be assured.
As for why they have survived so long -- look at the camping
crowd, which likes the ability to use gasoline fired lanterns instead of
having to carry heavy batteries for a weekend (or longer) camping trip.
[ ... ]
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.
Not just for an Ultra-60. It will work with the Ultra-30 (half
of an Ulra-60 -- only one CPU), Sun Fire 280R (my current file server),
Sun Blade 1000 and 2000 (my current workstations) the cheap Sun Ultra 5,
Ultra-10, and Sun Blade 100 (all three of these last machines use IDE
drives, not SCSI or FC-AL drives.
[ ... ]
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 :-).
It *would* have killed me -- to carry it that far. I'm an old
phart these days. :-)
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.
O.K.
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.
The interesting thing is that one of the SPARCstation clones,
the Solbourne S4000 and S4000dx (I have one of each) used a bipolar ROM
for the HOSTID and the MAC address, and the CMOS RAM and clock were
powered by a coin cell in a clip -- way back in the SS-2 days. Why it
took Sun so long to do this still puzzles me.
[ ... ]
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.
There is a program somewhere which will shut down the clock in
the chip -- which is what you want to do if it is going to be sitting
there out of a machine for a long time. This is how they are shipped,
and when the system does its POST it kicks the clock into operation.
Back in the old days of SunOs 4.1.x the time/date was stored in
the superblock, and checked against the clock chip on boot. If they
differed by more than a certain amount, you got a warning to check and
reset the clock. It *really* complains when I boot from a SunOs 4.1.2
CDROM (which of course *can't* have its superblock updated) to install
on an old system -- complaints about being over ten years out of sync. :-)
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.
The Ultra-60 is at most 450 MHz per CPU, and the Ultra-2 tops
out at 400 MHz per CPU, so the speed is pretty much the same. It is the
Sun Blade 2000, with a possible pair of 1200 MHz CPUs (such as I am
currently running) where things get a bit hasty. :-)
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
You might check the firmware version in yours (assuming that
you have the DVD-ROM drive instead of just a CD-ROM. I think that some
of my Ultra-2 machines came with DVDs, and others with CDs. Solaris 9
and 10 were a serious motivation to move to a DVD drive, because it was
one DVD (in place of 5 CDs, and you need to be there to keep changing
them), plus one CD or DVD for the Software Companion. Interestingly
enough, Sol-10u5 had a DVD for the Software Companion (1.4 GB total for
source, and binaries for both the UltraSPARC and the x86 lines), while
the latest Sol-10u6) has dropped the size of the Software Companion to
under 700 MB -- so it fits on a CD-ROM. I haven't yet installed
Sol-10u6 in the experimental machine, but I suspect that they have moved
more of the open source software from /opt/sfw (optional from the
Software Companion) to /usr/sfw (also open source softwre, but part of
the standard install). Until I get that installed, I won't know. I
just recently downloaded it -- an overnight run of about five hours with
a T1 line, FWIW.
[ ... ]
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.
Probably so. I've gotten an Ultra-2 (back when I was using
them) from a local used computer vendor for something like $50.00 US.
And the access to the less expensive units falls victim to the
costs of shipping across the pond.
What speed CPUs are you running on your Ultra-2? You can move
them into the Ultra-60 if you want to.
[ ... ]
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.
I like the Type-6 keyboard, which has a clip-on shelf on the
near side of the spacebar which serves nicely as a wrist rest when
typing in my reclining chair with the keyboard in my lap (which is how I
normally type.)
[ ... ]
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. :-)
And a friend was in the habit of picking up interesting lenses
and offering to trade them for something else which he wanted. :-) This
is the same friend who collected VAX computers. :-)
The final batch (lenses and spare bodies) was in exchange for a
50mm f0.95 for the Cannon-7 rangefinder. He found the camera to fit the
lens before I found one. I got the lens at a hamfest for about $15.00
many years ago. I did make a mount for the lens, and tried it on a
videcon at work for a project -- and it was quite soft and prone to
flare -- but it was *still* fast. :-)
[ ... ]
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 were *never* any there to fit any lenses I had except
those which already came with the proper rings. :-(
This became a mater of importance to me when I got a Nikon N90s
which had been modified by Kodak to become digital. All of a sudden,
many lenses would not work -- or even mount.
[ ... AI conversions ... ]
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 would like to have a CNC machine to engrave the markings, then
paint the machined area black and fill with appropriate colored paints.
Lacking that ability -- I'll just do without the markings, since no
camera which I have uses them.
[ ... ]
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.
Aha -- you are right. I don't have an Instamatic, but I do have
a cute little tiny camera with a nice fast zoom lens which uses the 110.
I hadn't tried to get any film for it in a long time. IIRC -- it also
required PX-13 mercury cells.
Enjoy,
DoN.
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