Thinking of buying a Nikon 990..Specs speak of a usb cable being included.. no talk of a serial cable or ability to use it..If you had one..Planing on down- loading to a laptop without a usb port..Can I do it to a serial port and where do I get the cable.

-- ROY A SPRINGER MD (springer_roy@hotmail.com), July 11, 2000

Answers

Hi Roy,

Forget serial, it's glacially slow compared to USB or alternatives.

If you're using a laptop and don't mind removing the compactflash card from the camera you can get a pcmcia ->CompactFlash adapter card for around $10-15.(search eBay for "pcmcia compactflash") You just pop the CF out of the camera and into the adapter then plug both into one of your laptop's pcmcia slots. I have a similar adapter for smartmedia and can transfer 8MB of images in about 15 seconds flat. It'd take me 20 minutes to download 8MB of images through a serial port. Your computer treats the CF & adapter as another disk drive. You just open the "Windoze" Explorer and copy the files to your hard drive -it couldn't be simpler unless it was wireless and you didn't have to remove the card from the camera. [Ok, so I guess it could be simpler... :-) ] The pcmcia adapter really is the simplest, fastest and smallest solution for mobile uses.

If you want to drag around a USB cable and mess with an adapter they do make pcmcia ->USB port card that you can plug into your laptop. As I recall when I searched for them, they go for around $35-$60.

For an even wonkier approach you can plug a parallel port based reader into your laptop's printer port and drag it, it's 6 foot cable and the keyboard port adapter it taks to power it around with you... (shaking head in shame admitting I've been there, done that... )

There are better alternatives to serial, I hope you find one you like.

Good Luck.

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@surferz.net), July 11, 2000.