Teardown of a mid 90's vintage Pentax IQZoomEZY film camera.
So many moving parts, packed into a tight space. I wonder how they prototyped the product development. Perhaps some combination of full cad as well as independent plastic mockups of the critical mechanical assemblies - gear trains, focus drive, takeup drive perhaps?.
I think I have a DX3215 still that was my first digital camera. I took quite a few pictures with it. It is no match for SLRs today though. Here are some of the last ones I took. The DX3215 I think was probably later, but more consumer than the one you had at 1.3MP. Some times I just used the 640x480 setting so it would store more and de noise.
Dave, answering your question about flash in modern cameras: because light is still needed to take photos.
And not everyone wants to spend money on a separate flash: those go from $50 to $500. And are not even available for compact cameras. Not to mention walking around with such a device and holding it in hand while taking photos is inconvenient.
The buld in flash is not very expensive. I remeber that one could get 1 way cameras with a flash that where not that expensive. External flashes add complications to the control and there are different types. Though using the same hot shoe, some of the older ones can be quite nasty, with a relatively high voltage at the contracts. The internal flash also does not need to enter the flash strength as an extra parameter. An external flash may be more powerfull, but for most uses the internal one is good enough, especially with moder relatively fast film.
After I got my first digital camera in 2000, I actually started taking more pictures with the conventional one than before. One kind of got used to taking more pictures and the first digital cameras were a bit limited with high contrast. Most pictures were still quite good, even with only 2 Mpixels.