Sanyo VPC-G210 digicam - PC connection
Trying to download camera images direct to a PC, I found that a generic PC serial lead (DB9 to 2.5mm 'stereo' plug) I'd sourced online didn't work - the camera wouldn't communicate with my PC's COM1 serial port.
Sanyo Digicam PC Serial lead pinouts
After much trial and error I discovered the wiring of the PC lead was itself wrong. The 'sleeve' (ring, middle contact) of the 2.5mm plug should actually be RS232 GND (pin 5). Surprisingly, the 2.5mm plug's 'ground' should be Rx (pin 2) and the plug tip is Tx (pin 3). RS232C pinouts are explained nicely here.
After connecting a 2.5mm stereo lead to the camera, then using croc clip leads to patch the RS232 pinouts the software sprang into life, automatically detected the camera on the COM port and downloaded the images without a problem.
Sanyo Digicam 'movies' and MGI PhotoSuite SE
Sanyo bundled a version of MGI Photosuite SE to manage the camera and dowload images onto PC. (MGI then sold out to Roxio, which in turn was acquired by Corel.) Now that I've got it running, here are some long-lost notes about Sanyo digicam 'movie clips'.
Using the Get Photos from Digital Camera button (or File... menu) will download images from the Sanyo camera into MGI PhotoSuite SE. Any 'movie' clips can be played as .avi files by ticking the Create AVI Files option. There's no other way to create Sanyo 'movies'.
'Movies' can then be viewed using eg Windows Media Player and also saved to hard disk as .avi files.
If you don't tick the Create AVI Files option, 'movies' are simply saved as a .jpeg containing 16 smaller sub-frame images (160 x 120 px). You can't re-open them from hard disk (or memory card) to make them into AVIs in MGI PhotoSuite, for example.
As I show elsewhere, you can create animated .gifs for eg embedding in web pages, by slicing JPGs into 16 smaller ones, save each 'frame' as a 160 x 120 px .gif, then upload them all into an online .gif animator. I did this successfully with Paint Shop Pro but a software bug in PSP corrupted the macros I'd created to automate the task.
Incidentally MGI Photosuite SE can also control the Sanyo camera to take photos, webcam style, including toggling the flash on or off. It also plays slide shows and handles rudimentary edits.
I'll maybe make up a new serial lead or an inline adaptor (2.5mm female - 2.5mm male) for the generic one that I bought.
All of this was handled using the COM port and was quite advanced at a time when digital photography was in its infancy.
Sanyo PC lead, Sanyo digicam, VPC-G210 
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