Frederick wrote:
I hope this is not OT, but I could find no better news group to post
this.
I have inherited an older digital camera that seems to work fine -
that is after I replaced the batteries. It is an AOL Photocam Plus
DC-620. It takes pics nicely. If I could find a way to connect it to
my XP SP3 computer in order to upload the pics, I would give it to one
of my kids. But alas, I cannot seem to be able to do that. I do have
the USB connected, and I have installed a software driver that
eliminates error- flags in XP Device Manager. That software is called
Digital Camera 640X480 USB Controller. But the XP machine still does
not recognize the camera.
Anyone have any experience with this camera? If not, I guess I will
pitch it. Maybe I am not doing something right? Being quite
fallible, I probably am. In my case, it would be called a permanent
senior moment.
Paul?
Thanks
Frederick
Here is a manual.
User Manual
http://web.archive.org/web/200407272...tocam_Plus.pdf
Your best bet, is to transfer photos via using a CF card. Doing
so, saves on battery life, and also cluttering the PC with more
bad software.
1) Insert CF into camera. Shoot photos.
2) Turn off camera. Pull CF, and plug CF into USB-based card reader
(some card readers accept as many as 57 different kinds of
storage media). Or use a dedicated USB to CF dongle (some photographers
do it that way).
3) Using the card reader, the CF will appear as a mass storage device,
and you can transfer off the images that way. Be careful where you
"format" the CF, as some cameras only accept their own formatting.
Hopefully, the camera has a menu item to format the CF media.
(Check that manual.)
The camera is 640x480, so don't expect miracles.
You can stop reading right here :-)
*******
The Win2K driver for the camera, mentions "TWAIN", but I don't understand
the reference. Methods of transferring off photos include USB Mass Storage,
PTP, MTP. Whereas things like TWAIN (old) and WIA (new) are methods for
transferring a live image from the thing as far as I know. (On checking
Wikipedia, TWAIN may do more than that. If so, the issue would be,
no WinXP version of driver. Presumably it hides the details of the device.)
There are driver sites offering a driver, but they also install...
you guessed it... Ask Toolbar.
For some reason, the camera has the same digital identification over
USB, as Polaroid pdc 700. But Polaroid went out of business long ago.
Links like this will no longer work. (The form factor of the DC-620
is different than the PDC700, but the electronics inside could
be virtually identical - same chip and sensor.)
http://www.polaroid.com/en/service/s...ain_driver.exe
I ended up here.
http://web.archive.org/web/200207010...ain_driver.exe
The file sizes and contents are very similar to the DC-620 driver.
The AOL driver installs DCCamera.sys and the Polaroid installs PDC700.sys
and while the file sizes aren't exactly the same (173,920 versus 173,576 bytes),
I expect they're the same type of driver. They even use the same
ClassGUID 6bdd1fc6-810f-11d0-bec7-08002be2092f
So if you want to pour junk into your OS, you could try the
pdc700_twain_driver.exe . (But you say you've already installed
the one for the DC_620, so I suppose there is no point now. You're
as ready as you can be right now, at the TWAIN level.)
I tested the driver installer in WINE under Ubuntu, just to be able
to look at the files is spews out. I don't like to install the
drivers in my regular OS.
With the TWAIN driver loaded, you still need application
level software. There is a description here, of some of the
things TWAIN can do.
http://www.eztwain.com/twain1.htm
"If appropriate, the application may transfer multiple images until it chooses
to stop, or until the DS signals that no more images are available."
Perhaps that's how the camera software would have worked. You
need an application that understands TWAIN, and will transfer
out the images over USB. The application was probably separate
from the driver, and written by a different company, and "AOL"
bundled the two items on their enclosed CD.
Paul