Canon 20D and Windows 98

Has anyone been able to connect the Canon 20D to a PC running Windows

98 (not 98SE)? When installing the drivers (either from CD, or

downloads from Canon's website) my computer either hangs up or gives

error code "1F7").

 

(I know, time to upgrade my computer, my other computer is an Apple

G5, but I still would like to connect the camera to my old one...)

 

Thanks!

Hi Andreas, While I haven't tried my 20D with Windoze 98 an alternative to upgrading might be to simply by a $25 USB card reader, which should work fine. I never download images from my cameras even though it works - it's much faster with a card reader. Good luck!

Does the straight version of Windows 98 support USB? I know my old computer has Windows 98SE and it does support USB connections.

Don't bother with a camera connection, get a cheap USB card reader. All variants of W98 support USB (actually, late versions of W95 did as well), and have no problem with simple standard peripherals like USB card readers.

It's a long time ago now, but I have a vague recollection that robust USB functionality was

one the significant improvements that Win 98 SE had over the original Win 98....

There are reasons to want to connect to a PC other than downloading images.

 

Win 98 can run USB. In fact Win 95 can run USB. They don't do it well, but they can do it with some applications if you're lucky. I have a laptop with Win 95 and a USB port.

 

Canon don't list Win 98 as being supported, but they do list Win 98SE. Doesn't mean you can't use Win 98, but it probably means you won't be able to get much help from Canon and it probably means you can expect problems under Win 98.

Probably it is the USB ports (or lack of support thereof..) cause I haven't been able to connect a CF card reader or memory stick either. Some other devices however do work on my USB ports: MP3 player, DSL modem... strange... Thanks for the input!

Nope, not strange at all. Just what I'd expect from USB on Win 98. Sometimes USB will work, sometimes it won't.

 

Upgrading the OS may or may not help. The harware support for your USB ports may be trouble. If you can disable them the best route would be an upgrade of the OS (say to Win 2000 if you can find a "spare" copy....) and adding in a USB card. That or just go out and buy a $400 PC system with XP already installed. Probably the better route.

Why don't you upgrade to SE? As far as I remember, this was a free upgrade for Win98 users. It's also the only non-NT version that's still supported with patches etc. by MS. Many peaces of software don't run on Win95 or the first version of Win98.

If it's free, try it, but don't expect too much. I had a hell of a time getting a win 98SE system to talk to some USB devices. Remember that when they were first making Win 98 machines, USB harware was still very young, so even if you have the SE version of the OS, you're still stuck with the old hardware. Maybe SE and new hardware might work, but with PCs so cheap today you have to wonder if it's worth the effort.

I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe you can get a device that will read CF cards and has an ATAPI interface, and if you are determined to stick with W98 this might provide a solution to actually transferring the images to your system. But you are making life very difficult for yourself, because I would be rather surprised if W98 proved to be an adequate platform for the sort of software you need for managing them once they are there.

I use Windows 98 SE at home, and it works fine with my cheap CF card reader (Trust). However, it failed to recognize another CF reader even as the reader had a driver for Win98.

 

I have no software problems. I know that I cannot run the newer versions of Photoshop, but it does not bother me much, I don't have any older version either :) None of the tools that I need and use has any obvious OS-specific problem on Windows 98.

Aren't there serial-port/parallel-port CF card readers that he can use to circumvent the whole USB-compatability issue? It'll be slow but I doubt you will get as many errors or have hang-ups.

serial port with 20D file sizes, god bless those who will wait for the files to transfer ! well, if you are looking into a better cheap replacement, check out Dell's website, look under small business, then click on outrageous deals ! usually they run 350 bucks and has usb 2.0 already installed with windows xp home edition.