MD-80 vs. Clone

[joeosmond]

hi thanks for the info on this camera. i have the clone and the battery life is terrible! anyone know of software to check the level and charge rate . any idea what amp/voltage it is so i can find a replacement!?
thank you in advance
Joe

[U.S. Water Rockets1]

We believe we have made a new discovery about the MD-80 Camera. We have been using the reflash technique to eliminate the time display from our MD-80 cameras, and we noticed that the flash is slightly different in our two cameras. It could possibly be that we have multiple firmware revisions in our two cameras but we were discussing this and one alternative we thought of was that the camera potentially uses some of the flash memory for nonvolatile memory storage... perhaps the camera undergoes some type of calibration procedure at the factory and the flash chip is used to hold the calibration parameters.

If anyone else has dumped their MD-80 flash memory, they should compare the results to the flash villamany has dumped and see if there are small blocks of memory that differ.

[Team Seneca]

We believe we have made a new discovery about the MD-80 Camera. We have been using the reflash technique to eliminate the time display from our MD-80 cameras, and we noticed that the flash is slightly different in our two cameras. It could possibly be that we have multiple firmware revisions in our two cameras but we were discussing this and one alternative we thought of was that the camera potentially uses some of the flash memory for nonvolatile memory storage... perhaps the camera undergoes some type of calibration procedure at the factory and the flash chip is used to hold the calibration parameters.

If anyone else has dumped their MD-80 flash memory, they should compare the results to the flash villamany has dumped and see if there are small blocks of memory that differ.

That's an interesting theory. I have two Clone MD80 cameras. The one that crashed is broken but it looks like the serial flash memory is intact. I'm trying to get something together that can dump the flash easily. I can compare the two if the chip wasn't ruined.

[villamany]

We believe we have made a new discovery about the MD-80 Camera...

I also have 2 cameras and firmwares also seen to be a bit diferent, i only try read original firmware of each camera, mofify and then send back to the camera.

[chenrp]

hello,
i got my clone MD80 and it work fine.
but the charge is always blinking.
it wont charge completely.
firstly i tried by USB and than by 220V charger...
any one ?

[villamany]

try first with another cable, then with another charger (cables and chargers that comes with camera are very bad quality, seems to work but do not work 100% ok)

[joeosmond]

hello,
i got my clone MD80 and it work fine.
but the charge is always blinking.
it wont charge completely.
firstly i tried by USB and than by 220V charger...
any one ?

same problem , cam only films for 10-15 min max.

[U.S. Water Rockets1]

We believe we have made a new discovery about the MD-80 Camera. We have been using the reflash technique to eliminate the time display from our MD-80 cameras, and we noticed that the flash is slightly different in our two cameras. It could possibly be that we have multiple firmware revisions in our two cameras but we were discussing this and one alternative we thought of was that the camera potentially uses some of the flash memory for nonvolatile memory storage... perhaps the camera undergoes some type of calibration procedure at the factory and the flash chip is used to hold the calibration parameters.

If anyone else has dumped their MD-80 flash memory, they should compare the results to the flash villamany has dumped and see if there are small blocks of memory that differ.

That's an interesting theory. I have two Clone MD80 cameras. The one that crashed is broken but it looks like the serial flash memory is intact. I'm trying to get something together that can dump the flash easily. I can compare the two if the chip wasn't ruined.

There's no other memory in the camera so they have to have some degree of factory programming stored there. After thinking about it some more we realized the programmed differences should include a serial number used by the USB host to individually address each camera. This should be easy to discover using a USB sniffer or poking around in the hardware device list of a windows PC with a camera connected. The same number should be easily discovered by comparing to the dumped MD80 clone camera (or a gumpack camera or 808 car keys camera, etc.)

That would be just one setting that could be verified easily.

[U.S. Water Rockets1]

hello,
i got my clone MD80 and it work fine.
but the charge is always blinking.
it wont charge completely.
firstly i tried by USB and than by 220V charger...
any one ?

same problem , cam only films for 10-15 min max.

The batteries in these cameras are no better quality than the cables... in other words, $20 for a camera probably won't get you good components. There's no reason to expect they are going to work well. You have to just roll the dice and hope you get one that works.

[joeosmond]

hello,
i got my clone MD80 and it work fine.
but the charge is always blinking.
it wont charge completely.
firstly i tried by USB and than by 220V charger...
any one ?

same problem , cam only films for 10-15 min max.

The batteries in these cameras are no better quality than the cables... in other words, $20 for a camera probably won't get you good components. There's no reason to expect they are going to work well. You have to just roll the dice and hope you get one that works.

do you know of any batterys i could buy to replace it with?

[U.S. Water Rockets1]

do you know of any batterys i could buy to replace it with?

Do you want the exact same size battery or would you be open to a larger size battery that you can mount externally but would last much longer?

[joeosmond]

do you know of any batterys i could buy to replace it with?

Do you want the exact same size battery or would you be open to a larger size battery that you can mount externally but would last much longer?

either lol

[chenrp]

what is the size of the battery? i want to put a larger one (more mah)

thank you.

[U.S. Water Rockets1]

what is the size of the battery? i want to put a larger one (more mah)

thank you.

A great place to get good batteries is to take them out of old cell-phones. These are nice and powerful and you just stick them into the phone and put it in the charger when you need to recharge them. It beats trying to build a special charger for these batteries.

[chenrp]

have you done such a mod?
can you post pictures?

thank you.