Not all USB connectors are equal
This morning I decided to grab a few photos off of my friend’s camera I borrowed when I went to the World Class Driving 200 MPH EXTREME event last weekend. After all, it has a mini-USB connector on the camera (I thought) and I have dozens of cables from the myriad of devices I have purchased over the years.
Enter micro-USB connector
Much to my surprise, the Olympus FE-370’s mini-USB connector is very “mini”. In fact, it is so mini, it is called “micro” USB. It is just slightly smaller than mini and will not accept any of the many mini cables that I own. Being that there is literally two and a half feet of fresh snow outside and not being the type to give up easily, I fished around for a few of my memory readers and removed the memory card from the camera.
My handy little Transcend RDP8 memory card reader can read four different formats. This should be no problem. Denied! It turns out the Olympus has a special memory card called an xD Picture Card. These are probably more common that I think – but not common enough for my Transcend reader that I bought for my 16GB CF card. My SanDisk reader (2 formats) would not accept it as well.
Looks like I need to trudge out into the cold and snow to borrow the cable for the camera. I should probably invest in a micro-USB cable of my own and a newer memory card reader as well.
