Bruno Bustos , Mar 21, 2010; 12:08 a.m.
hello i just found my fathers old sony mavica camera it is a mvc A7AF i just wanted to get some more information on it. i dont know if i posted in the right place. i have googled it but i only came up with info on how revolutionary of a camera it was. any info would be greatly appreciated. can i still find floppies for it?
thanks
Larry Dressler 
, Mar 21, 2010; 06:00 a.m.
Patrick Dempsey , Mar 21, 2010; 06:05 p.m.
I think the format is NTSC analog video format... the same as televisions. The Mavica is actually not a digital camera as often reported, but a still analog video camera that uses the same technology as any VHS video camera. According to Wiki, the 3 1/4" disks were formatted in DOS FAT12:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Mavica
So your floppy will need to be in that format to work. I don't know enough about 20-year-old floppy-disk technology to recommend where to get disks in the proper format or if you can format a modern disk into that format from a modern machine. If you are friendly with someone in IT, you should have a chat with them about it... it sounds like the kind of thing most IT people would have fun with.
Once you get the correct disks, your second challenge will be the NTSC video format. I'm not sure if any of the readily available video media players out there will play still NTSC files or not. That might be a bit tricky. I know there are players that can stream NTSC, as people have been using computers to stream TV signals for a long time now.
Lastly, I hope Sony had the good sense to use AA batteries and not some weird proprietary battery pack as was common with video cameras at the time.
