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by julian_sark 1148 days ago
Kudos!

I cracked open (both out of curiosity and for recycling) my own 1999 Logitech QuickCam Express just a few days ago, then tossed away the parts. It was a decent webcam for the time, which was when Windows 98 was all the rage.

My desktop admittedly being a Windows system, I dabbled for a while trying to get the old drivers and software to work on Windows 11, alas, not a chance.

I liked the quirky thing especially for the physical visor that assured me nobody is watching me when the camera SHOULD be off, and saved me the masking tape (except for a single strip permanently glued to the inside of the visor, because for some odd reason, the thing was semi-translucent!)

I went out and bought a Trust webcam with Windows 11 support which astonishingly cost me less than three Euros (!!) new, at the bargain store. The Logitech, once upon a time, was more than ten times as much, not adjusted for inflation. Alas, the Logitech QuickCam had lower resolution, but still a better picture.

This was a very intreresting read, as I naively assumed that USB cameras had to follow some HID-like standard also for polling images off of it, like a scanner's TWAIN driver model back in the days. It was enlightening to read that they indeed seem to have had a unique encoding not shared with other cameras.

2 comments

I believe they now most do follow the UVC standard; however OP's Logitech camera was manufactured before that was established.
If I recall correctly there was also a parallel port version of this webcam, for people using computers without usb support
There definitely was a Mac mini-Din-8 serial port version as well. I believe it was the original, before there even was a version for PC/Windows: https://wiki.preterhuman.net/Connectix_QuickCam
Connectix cameras were all CCD, BW ones used Texas Instruments TC255 http://wastelands-observatory.factspot.com/equipment/. This fabulously ungooglable DMS provider claims to have designed and manufactured it for Connectix https://www.odi.net/portfolio.html