Intel Microscope QX3

[cyber_thought]

I've sat here with my photographic lupe and a magnifying glass for sometime when I've changed cartridges and took out old cartridges for possible trade-in value...I've also sat next to an Intel Play Microscope QX3 which was hooked-up to my old computer and thought would be fun to dust off and see if I could get it working on my new one...

Long story short...3 years it's sat gathering dust aside from a school project or two...today I looked over at it, put an old AT cartridge on the sample shelf and viola! It seems fine from 10x,
60x, and even quite good at 200x.

so it might be worth checking out to see if it's still available (garage sales, etc w/software) and it was pretty much fine under
Win98 and almost completely plugnplay with Win-XP/Pro...under-light, over-light, 3 powers, and photo (jpeg export)...may even examine a few old belts and plugs...hope the kids don't miss it...
photo at 60x...

[user510]

The above image is a dirty stylus from a BPS at 200X. Not too terribly bad an image from the toy Intel QX3.

I bought one of the last ones from Amazon.com before they went out of stock. Intel has stopped making them. Another company picked up the patent rights. Don't know if they still continue. There is a web resource on this toy microscope here:
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/intelplay/index.html

This link is pretty good. they offer a number of suggestions for improving output. Yep.....tweaks. Made me feel right at home.

http://www.theanalogdept.com/microscopy.htm
Link above for a few more images I took with the Intel QX3.

Btw I don't use the supplied software. The microscope is twain compliant and imports quite nicely into Photoshop.

Kind of fun but it makes me want a 'real' digital microscope.

-Steve