Yesterday I received my new STF-8300 from local dealer. Went through all the correct setup procedures for the camera as per instructions. All drivers and firmware current according to Driver Checker. Windows 7 laptop with camera directly connected with supplied USB cable. Power is with the supplied 120vac converter. The Windows 7 Device Manager shows the camera connected with a proper USB connection to my laptop. I decided to shoot 30 dark and 100 bias frames. Camera tightly capped. No problem. Camera downloaded frames fast and they looked like they should. After that I attached a Canon camera lens to the camera. The room was daylight. I selected the shortest exposure possible (0.09sec). The TX Timeout Error message appeared. The camera became unresponsive. If I power cycled the camera it would make the "rattle" noise, but when another light exposure was taken, the error message appeared again, with the camera becoming up responsive. My problem is identical to this, with the exception of the operating system used: http://www.diffractionlimited.com/f...river-receive-timeout-error-30008-again.2123/ This is not intermittent. I can repeat it any time if the camera is exposed to any light at all. I have tested this with CCDOPS, SGP and The Sky X. Always the same error with a light frame exposure of even the shortest duration. This is what CCDOPS reports for Firmware & Drivers in my camera: Firmware: 2.53 Driver: SBIGU DRV DLL VER 4.92 BUILD 1 SBIGU 64 SYS VER 2.41.0.1338 Needless to say the camera is essentially useless in this condition. Please instruct me how to fix this problem. Doug Z.
Update: After posting the above, and with many attempts at getting the camera to work with my Windows 7 laptop, I loaded the drivers (via: Driver Checker) into my Windows 8.1 Desktop. Using SGP to test, the camera works perfectly, whether taking dark or light frames. A fully saturated exposure downloads just fine and does not cause the camera to freeze. The laptop always worked with my other (Atik) cameras. It has never had USB connection problems with any devices. So, at this point it seems there is something wrong with how the drivers/firmware are interacting with the laptop. I would appreciate any suggestions as to where to go from here. Doug Z.
Doug, this may be really related to Windows 7 OS, because I did a lot of trials to get driver's error 8 with my remotely controlled STF-8300 camera and this errors (no. 7 or 8) never happened. Here is my setups: - PC with Windows 10 and/or Mac Mini (OS X 10.11.2) running Java client software remotely connected (Ethernet or WiFi) to an ARM embedded Linux machine running Java server app. - Running in focus mode (like in CCDOPS) with a short (0.1 sec.) and/or longer (3 to 10 sec.) exposure times. - Taking dark frames, than suddenly overexpose CCD chip with a short or longer 10 sec. bright light flashes. Images were either darks (ADUs ~1k) or fully saturated (65k) light frames depending on imaging mode, but taking images worked as expected without any reported errors. Regards, Jan
Jan, Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I think you are correct. The camera works perfectly on the Windows 8 desktop, so it must be a Windows 7 problem. Good excuse for a new laptop! Thank you, again. Doug
Doug, maybe my answer was a bit unclear. I wanted to say, that my STF-8300 is running on a small Linux machine and that setup is remotely controlled from Win 10, Max OSX or another Linux machine due to Java is platform independent. Also inside that embedded Linux, there is an older driver & firmware I have compiled when worked for Diffraction Limited. So, I wanted to say, that under Linux OS I do not see RX/TX timeout errors, but please this statement is only based on my personal observations. See an attached picture. Jan
Jan, No problem! Today I purchased a new Win10 laptop, as my old one was ready to die sooner or later anyway. With the Driver Checker having installed the latest drivers, the STF-8300 is now working perfectly. There must have been some issues with the original Win7 OS. Maybe my fault as I seldom updated it. Doug
