Semi-long exposures with the Vesta (Pro)

Before the invention of the true long exposure modifications, some French amateur astronomers wrote a '1 second exposure' software patch for the Philips Vesta (Pro) camera. 
If you are interested it can be downloaded here

I must admit that I used this patch some time ago, well before the Steve Chambers modifications, and I had some thoughts about it. I did not have the equipment to test it, so eventually forgot the whole patch.
My interest was renewed when someone asked about this type of patch.
As I bought an oscilloscope a few months ago with, literary, my last 15 guilders in a second hand shop (I had to get rid of my guilders on the last day of 2001, because the Euro was introduced on the first day of 2002), a real bargain.

The oscilloscope: a Philips PM 3232 0-10 MHz, dual trace

With this scope, I decided to give the patch another try. I set the scope at 100 ms/div and pointed the Vesta at the screen, watching the electron beam moving across.

Here are the results:

In the normal mode, WITHOUT the patch, with everything set to 'auto' and  a framerate of 5 fps. the camera will take images with an exposure time of 1/5th of a second. This is NOWHERE described in the manual, and discovered by experimenting. The proof is in the oscilloscope image:

Everything is set to 'auto', with a framerate of 5 fps

This image clearly shows an exposure of 200 ms.

In the normal mode, WITHOUT the patch, and manually selected exposure time of 1/25th of a second and a framerate of 5 fps, the oscilloscope confirms these settings:

The 1/25 second, 5 fps. setting

Now the '1 second exposure'. In the camera dialog box shows a 1 second setting, and everything is manually selected. (NOTE: When taking the oscilloscope picture, the light on my desk was slightly turned, and this causes the brighter image, compared to the first image in this test)

The '1 second exposure' is actually a 1/5th second exposure

Conclusion:

From this tests it is clear that the '1 second exposure' is in fact a manually chosen true 200 ms. exposure. It will not give any other capabilities to the camera, compared with the original software. You only have an option to set the exposure by HAND to 1/5th of  a second, rather than checking the 'auto' box and thus allowing the camera software to do that.
Some people might find this patch useful, mainly as a 'searchlight' when finding objects, but I think it doesn't add any advantages to the original software.