Ric Trexell wrote:

Back about 1990 there was a company advertising a $300 board that you put in
your computer. They advertised in Computer Shopper and it was a video
capture board. I bought it and used it to take digital photos off of VHS
video tape. I still have the board but it is sitting on a shelf, probably
never to see the inside of a computer again. The company is no longer in
business and I can't even remember the name of it. At the time there were
only BBS's and no internet. (Well except for the colleges and military.) I
was the first to post pictures of my local area on some sites. The pictures
were good if you didn't blow them up more than about the size of a 3X5
photo. Now my computer has that ability with Win XP to take a picture off
of a DVD. So if need be, I can just transfere my VHS tapes to a DVD and
capture the shot that way. I still have a few of the early shots, but since
they are on VHS tape, I can see them on the video or DVD.

Steve Ciarcia in the 80's or 90's did a project that used a dynamic
memory chip as a sensor for a simple camera.

There was a 200K pixel or so camera in Japan before the Caiso camera's
that uses a small floppy disk. It cost in the $2000 range and except for resolution
actually worked reasonably well it was implemented as a SLR.

w..