Compaq YC-72 Webcam - Back to Home

I got this very old Compaq webcam back in 2019, but I figured it would fit with this website, even if it's not a new acquisition.

It's a Compaq YC-72 from around 1997, originally made by Intel, but rebranded to Compaq. Since USB has only existed since that year, it must be one of the first USB webcams ever.

Before USB, early webcams used the LPT/parallel port. Since the parallel port doesn't supply power, you also had to feed it to a PS/2 port and use your keyboard or mouse through a funky pass-through. It was quite the awful process.

I also have a CF card reader that uses parallel & PS/2, and it usually takes me about 5 minutes to get it up & running. This is why USB is probably my favorite computer invention of all time.

The camera, with the plastic base removed.

Anyways, the maximum resolution for this camera is a laughable 176x144, also a common resolution for many phone cameras in the early 2000s. Unlike those phones, the FPS of the video is a smooth looking 30FPS. I only captured images, but I might update this with a link to a video clip.

Test image of some stickers on a machine.

Test image of my group of old Dells. Slightly corrupted.

Unfortunately, one of the images got a little corrupted when I transferred it to my main PC, possibly due to the dying Chinese flash drive I used. Just because it seemed interesting to me, here's that area zoomed in:

An enlarged image of the area of corruption on the previous image.

The low light performance is, as to be expected, terrible. I took those images on a very bright day with the window wide open, and just the faint shadow of my desk is enough for it to look a little dark sometimes. Don't even think about filming at night.

Despite everything I just said, I'd say the image quality is better than I would've guessed, especially compared to the black & white webcams that came only a couple years before it. The manual focus on it still manages to be far better than my smartphone's brainless autofocus.