MX motor drive

Has anyone had any experience with the motor drive for the MX Pentax?

Do you really mean the motor drive or the much more common auto winder? I used the latter a lot for many years until the MX died. The only problem is that the battery covers are very easily damaged.

It's the motor drive I'm interested in

I tried to get one of these a while back, but after scanning e-bay and local camera shops for sometime, gave up. By then, I had the *ist which is reasonably fast.

If you do find them advertised, the seller doesn't always know the difference between the two, and will sometimes advertise the winder wrongly as a motor drive. This happened to me, but the picture gave it away, and I asked the seller, who amended the description

It's worth noting that the motor drive will only give the rated speed when the shutter sped is sufficiently high (5fps isn't it?). I guess it's still faster than my K10D, but the K10D is cheaper to run off 36 exposures at once

It has been many years since I have used an MX Motor Dive so my memory may not be accurate in every detail, but as far as I recall:

The MX motor drive had to have the film length set (from 1 to 36 exp) or it could wrench the film from its canister when it reached the end of the roll. The motor drive counted down the frame numbers as they were taken and stoped at zero (assuming the correct film length had been set). I do not believe it would power-rewind the film as the LX Motor Drive would, but it is possible I have forgotten.

Generally the drive used the screw-on Ni-Cd battery pack M which had an auxilliary shutter release at the rear and allowed single shot or continuous shooting on shutter release. It could also make use of the LX Ni-Cd battery pack (just as the LX could use the MX pack). It used the charge pack M for recharging. There was also a large pistol grip battery pack which attached in place of the battery pack M. This allowed the use of alkaline AA cells for extra punch.

If memory serves you couldn't set a precise frame rate. A control allowed selection of high to low speed (5 fps down to 0.5 fps). This was probably sensible as frame rate depended on the state of the battery and shutter speed in use. The motor drive's grip with trigger release at the front improved the handling of the MX, particularly with longer lenses and gave a more positive anchor for the fingers. In many respects the K10D's grip reminds me of the Motor drive MX grip.

Once attached to an MX body it formed a very nice solid unit and performed flawlessly. In use it was much more aggressive and powerful than the winder.