ST7E-EthBox Serious Problem using Latest Drivers

I have two ST7e cameras connected by two of the Parallel-Ethernet boxes to my network. I am telling you this so that you can be assured I am not having a camera problem or a network problem.

I have CCDOps lite running on the Mac, and CCDOps running on two XP virtual machines running under Parallels on the same computer. The problem I am reporting does not appear to have anything to do with the overall software environment which has been running for years.

I recently installed then "current" version of the sbig driver checker 64 on one of the virtual machines and in the Mac along with the newest versions of CCDOps and CCDOps Lite.

Since this update, the images from both of the cameras are totally corrupted with a matrix of alternating bright and dark row when the image is acquired either by CCDOps lite on the Mac side or CCDOps or CCDSoft on the XP side in the virtual machine that was updated with the new drivers. This mess occurs on every image, light and dark, in all binning modes, on both cameras, every exposure.

Taking an image a minute later using the same camera using CCDOps or CCDSoft running on the other virtual machine that is still running the old drivers shows no problems whatsoever.

Please note that I have 4 other SBIG USB cameras on the same system and they are working just fine.

I have attached files from the mac ccdops lite, from ccdops on the updated XPVM, and from ccdops on the not updated XPVM. Note that the first two show the same problem, the third does not. All were taken over a few minutes duration. I had to Jpeg them to attach, but I have lots of examples!.

I have also attached the SBIG driver checker from the VM1 (new and bad) and VM2 (old and good).

Please Help!

Gary Cole
garycole@mac.com

 

Thanks for your response.

I followed your suggestion "Download and Done" and Update. This brought the universal driver version up to 4.81 from 4.80.

After restarting CCDOPs, nothing seems to have have changed.

SBigDriverChecker64 Version 4.00 Build 10 (32 bit)

 

To followup. I reinstalled the drivers on the Mac, rebooted etc. No change in imaging behavior.
Here is the text from the info window of CCDOpsLite connected to the camera.

Camera Info:Camera Type:ST-7 with ABGCamera Name:SBIG ST-7 Dual CCD CameraFirmware Version:1.06Serial Number:719610895A/D Resolution:16 BitsExternal Trackeroesn't SupportCCD Temperature:29.96 Degrees CAmbient Temp.:30.51 Degrees C Imaging CCD:Number of Pixels:765 x 510Pixel Size:9.00 x 9.00 micronsElectronic Gain:2.30 e-/ADUCCD Type:Full Frame CCDElectronic Shutter:NoFrame Buffer:No Tracking CCD:Number of Pixels:190 x 162Pixel Size:13.75 x 16.00 micronsElectronic Gain:1.30 e-/ADUCCD Type:Full Frame CCDElectronic Shutter:NoFrame Buffer:No Driver Info:Driver Info:SBIGUDrv.framework
Version 4.84Ext. Driver Info:ESRVJK.EXE Ver 1.00
Version 1.00USB Loader Info:ESRVJK.EXE Ver 1.00
Version 1.00SBIGCam Class:Version 1.33

 

I don't want to waste anyone's time, so I wanted to tell you that I have found a simple workaround for my XP virtual machine CCDOps image corruption problem described above.

This consisted of simply replacing ( in /Windows/System) the SBIGUdrv.dll dated 9/22/2014 (4.80 build 1) with the version dated 2/12/2012 (4.74 build 7) which has been running in my other XP VM.

With this change made and using the most recent CCDOps (5.55 build 41-NT) all my problems went away. Just to be sure I switched back to the 2014 version of the dll, repeated the XP failures described in the original post, then switched back to the 2012 version and tested again with no problems.

So, to summarize, somewhere in the past 2 years you appear to have lost compatibility in the 32 bit driver with your old parallel to ethernet box. If you want to send me a zip containing the intermediate versions of sbigudvr.dll , I would be happy to determine the version where the problem developed.

The MAC problem with CCDOpsLite persists, but it is not critical to my operation. Hence these problems are no longer of immediate urgency for me, albeit they do appear to be real issues in your software.

Regards,
Gary

 

Gary,

I just checked my notes and see that we have switched our development environment from Visual C++ to Visual Studio 2012 in April 2013 to cover Win 7 & 8
development properly. This was a huge change, because MVS 2012 required several new libraries which are in our new distributions now, but not inside the Ethernet Server
application you are using - ESRVJK.xxx. This is probably the source of all problems... I am not sure we are even able to repair it because we do not have such a hardware
at all.

Your "patch" is all right and simple, although not convenient, of course... On the other hand, we didn't apply any changes to ethernet stuff inside our current driver related
to your older cameras, so I think you are still "up to date" with your driver.

Thank you for your valuable information.

Jan

 

Jan, Thanks for your comments. The software running in the black box (E2P) is a DOS application, certainly not built with any of the MSVC libraries. Since the communication to the PC is via IP, and the camera is obviously taking images, changing filters, etc. the problem really has to be on the way the PC side driver is interpreting the IP messages. It pretty much has to be buried in an IP library embedded into sbigudrv.dll. If I had to guess, I'd bet its an 'Int' to 'Long' change made by the newer compilation environment.

Anyway, I am past this problem and there are probably less than a hundred of these boxes in existence. I have a very unusual operating configuration with 7 Sbig cameras (7E, 7E, 9XE, 8XE, RGH, 402, and ST-i) and all three Sbig spectrographs running in 2 XP vm's under MacOSX.

As I offered, if you want to send me anything to test, please feel free to do so, otherwise I think we have concluded this thread. You might, however, add a note to the CCDOps release log that the current driver does not work with these boxes.

Regards,
Gary