How to delete pictures from a 16 year old Sony Camera?

destroying the camera will delete all of it's pictures saved in it

Put the memory card back  into your camera.

Next, go into the menu and choose "format."  This function is typically found under the icon of a wrench or a gear.  When formatting a memory card (or any storage device) what happens is that the file system's lookup table is cleared.  This is what the camera uses to keep track of files and free space.  When you format a card the table is deleted thus when you use the camera, it assumes that all of the card is free space.  But your photos are still there since they were not actually deleted.

If you need to literally remove the data so that someone with a file recovery app can't retrieve your photos, then you'll need to format the card and place the card into a card  reader to make the process quick.  Next copy files (files that you don't care if someone finds them) into the card until the memory is full.  This writes data over the old photos.  Next reformat the card using the camera and NOT the computer.  The  camera uses a different file system which has a different lookup table.  You MUST use the camera and not the computer otherwise the card won't work in the camera.

There are also programs that securely wipe data from a storage device by writing random 1s and 0s to the card multiple times making it impossible to recover files.  I do this for sensitive files such as tax forms and bank documents.

Format the memory card.

Clearing photos from a camera through the computer is NOT the proper way to do it, now or 16 years ago. You need to ALWAYS clear the memory card IN THE CAMERA, NOT with a computer. What you need to look for is how to FORMAT the card in the camera. It will be in the menus on the camera somewhere. You can look up the exact camera model on Google or probably even on the Sony website and find the information you need. Again though, NEVER try to clear out a camera memory card with a computer. Do a FORMAT of the card with the CAMERA.

Normally, you use the format function on the camera which erases all the images. If you want to delete selected images, use the camera delete function or use Windows Explorer. Deleting individual images can be dangerous on older cameras since the memory card can be corrupted (rare, but it happens). As the other poster stated, M$ 365 has nothing to do with clearing images. In fact, using any M$ product to view multimedia is a horrible thing to do since M$ media products don't work well compared to other solutions that are free.

What are you talking about exactly? Microsoft 365 has absolutely nothing to do with cameras or pictures. M365 is the new name for Office 365 which is Microsoft's suite of programs for office/home use like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and others.

It would help if you tell us what the model number of the camera is. Chances are high that whatever software that camera originally shipped with doesn't support newer versions of Windows. Again, without more details, I'm just guessing so I can't help much more than that.