The Thrill of Testing Cameras

["Thomas Droege" <tdroege2@earthlink.net>]

As my brother says, "The thrill of a lifetime often comes at the end."

I have been testing cameras.  I finally came to the end of the chips that
had been used in cameras before.  So I took a brand new one out of it's box.

CCD442As seem to come in as many varieties as there were owners of the
device.  5 or 6 or 7.  I have lost track.  When you go to plug a CCD442A
in, it is important to get it plugged in right.  Two of the 4 work.  The
other two destroy the device. 

The first devices I bought had different colored insulators on pin 1.  The
next had different colored insulators on pin 1 and the one diagonally
across from it.  The next ones had no different color on the insulator, but
the opposite corners had no insulators so you knew they were ground pins
and could plug the chip in correctly.  Next came versions with the same
colored insulators everywhere.  But you could look through the lid and see
that the opposite corner pins had a bond wire to the case.  

The new chip I just opened is yet another version.  All the insulators were
the same color.  No bond wires from any corner pin to ground.  The only way
to tell the orientation was to look for Dr. Bredthauer's name in the border
of the chip.  Comparing two chips I could figure out how to plug it in.  So
I did.

And it worked.  As I say, this is thrilling work.

There are now 6 good cameras in the pile.  I need 2 for TOM3, but the rest
can go into a prototype Mark V.

Tom Droege



Tom  Droege Jennifer Malpass
tdroege2@earthlink.net