Modding the Kodak Reels 8mm Film Digitizer (Firmware Hack)

Funny story... It seems I've 99.9% recovered my Type-A. I soldered on the new SD Card connector, but discovered the missing pad is the write protect switch signal. I tried connecting to some of the nearby traces, with no luck, unit would report SD was write protected. However, as the unit could now read the SD, I could update the firmware. So I wrote firmware to ignore the write protect switch, so it now records too.

Some lesson learned, "SD" stands for secure digital, turns out it is not very secure, as the write protect switch is completely ignorable if the driver wishes. When I enabled the write protect switch on the SD card, my Type-A Reelz can happily write to it. The switch does nothing, other than provide false hope that your data is "secure".

Gwennia said:

Here's the video reposted, hopefully it works for you @0dan0. I'm not sure that I'm mechanically inclined enough to solve that problem right now. I think I found some of the code related to the motor function, at least potentially where it was choosing between the super 8 and 8mm switch. But that turning mechanism is a little above me. I can look at it and understand what it's doing, but I have no clue how to change it to increase the distance it goes. I'm guessing I'd have to pull that plate out completely to figure it out.

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I would be interested in any code you have found regarding the motor functions.

I didn't see any sprocket movement difference between Super8 and 8mm, even though the there is ~8.5% difference in the sprocket gap (~3.78mm - 8, ~4.1mm - S8). So it is possible that just a cam change for 16mm would work.

Gwennia said:

Here's the video reposted, hopefully it works for you @0dan0. I'm not sure that I'm mechanically inclined enough to solve that problem right now. I think I found some of the code related to the motor function, at least potentially where it was choosing between the super 8 and 8mm switch. But that turning mechanism is a little above me. I can look at it and understand what it's doing, but I have no clue how to change it to increase the distance it goes. I'm guessing I'd have to pull that plate out completely to figure it out.

Click to expand...

Hard to be sure from looking at the vids, but it doesn't look like you have the extra room in the shuttle mechanism to put a larger cam in there. You might be able to grind away some metal on the left of the shuttle to give you the extra room you need. It looks like they are only using the spring tension to pull the arm back to the left after the cam pushes it to the right.

fishgee said:

Hard to be sure from looking at the vids, but it doesn't look like you have the extra room in the shuttle mechanism to put a larger cam in there. You might be able to grind away some metal on the left of the shuttle to give you the extra room you need. It looks like they are only using the spring tension to pull the arm back to the left after the cam pushes it to the right.

Click to expand...

The cam is not a circle, so the 1.5mm would on the lump side only. You could also only increase the lump only 0.75mm, if you decrease the opposite side 0.75mm, it is the difference in the displacement at different angles that creates the motion path.