My choice of the Kodak DC20 digital camera was dictated by cost and convenience. At $349 list, and $300 on the street, it was about half the price of the next cheapest digital camera and a tenth of the price of professional models with advanced optics and higher pixel density. While a crisper, more enlargeable picture can be gotten from Casio and Ricoh cameras, or even from higher-end Kodaks, none of these cameras have the extreme light weight (under 4oz.) and small size of the DC20, which fits into a shirt or jacket pocket almost unnoticed. The picture quality is fairly good for snapshot size, but the camera can only store a limited number of pictures. Unlike more expensive (and clunkier) digitals with expandable memory card storage, the DC20 can only take eight "high definition" pictures. You need to download these to a PC to clear the camera for more action. This means that as is, it is not a practical vacation or weekend camera, unless you're willing to lug around a laptop PC. I'm not I carry my Palmtop PC in my pocket.
Luckily for me, other Palmtop users felt the same way and did something about it. An inquiry on the Internet site comp.sys.palmtops brought word of an English-language web page maintained by Mr. Hideki of Japan (hideki@yk.rim.or.jp) (http://www.yk.rim.or.jp/~hideki/es1000/lxdc-e.html). This page has links to Eiichiroh Itoh's LXDC.EXM, a System-Manager compliant program that enables you to connect the Kodak DC20 to an HP 100/200LX and transfer the pictures to the Palmtop's A or C drive (you chose the location by editing the LXDC.INI configuration file located in C:\_DAT). Each picture is a 130k .IMG file, so a 10 Mb flash RAM card can store 75 shots. You can then put LXDC.EXM into server mode, hook the Palmtop up to a PC or Mac running the Kodak Windows (or Mac) TWAIN software to complete the transfer. Hideki's page describes ways to make the cable needed to link the Palmtop with the DC20: the quick and dirty way is to patch the HP Connectivity Kit's serial cable to the DC20 cable with the 9-pin male-to-male null modem adapter which comes in the Connectivity Kit (NOT the simple straight-through 9-pin male-to-male gender changer!). Mr. Itoh showed me how to reset the transfer speed on the TWAIN Windows program to accommodate the Palmtop and I was in business. Mr. Itoh has promised to prepare English language documents to help get others going, but the program is pretty easy to use as is.
Jeffrey F. Friedman E-mail: jeff@friedman.com