Digital cameras have become more popular over the past few years as they have come down in price with several decent quality affordable models on the market, unfortunately they all seem to have one main fault, well not really a fault with the camera, but the power and data cables. The most common problems seem to be cables breaking (where the wire enters a preformed plug) followed by battery compartment/casing damage (usually caused by dropping the camera). The power cables also suffer from stress breaks but are normally easier to get plugs for and consist of only 2 wires, 0V and +V which makes it easy to remake/repair. I have had a few requests for the pinouts for camera data cables so that they can be repaired/renewed, if you can get the plug/connector (some use special connections that are hard to find) You can cut off the damaged part or the cable, usually a stress break within an inch of the connector caused by bending/flexing of the cable and fit a new plug. The best option is to build a proper cable with good quality shielded multicore cable, high spec shielded connectors and some form of radio frequency interference protection, (Ferrite Rings or high frequency chokes) I would advise anyone making a new cable to keep it as short as possible, allowing for your particular system layout, 3 feet is usually the Maximum length quoted for such cables. I can only provide the pinout details for the models I have used so far. The cable I use has ferrites / rfi suppression and is fitted with a DB9 female connector. I plug this into a DB-9 to DB-25 serial adapter which is attached to the computers DB25 RS232 serial port.
Hope this helps to fix your cable troubles, or to build a heavy duty cable that will last.
PLEASE NOTE! The colours used on this diagram have no resemblance to the colours you may find in your own cables, these colours were merely chosen to make the diagram easy to understand, they also appear as different shades on monochrome displays. If anyone does have a problem with this image or any of the pictures on this site, let me know and I'll sort it out.
Enjoy your digicams! ozz.
