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Old 28-11-2020, 08:43 PM
HarryD (Greg)
Registered User

HarryD is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Sydney
Posts: 148
Hi again

Well where do I start. I will try to make it brief.

Camera was finally released from customs.

I had a phone call from Andrew at Atik, which was nice.
Couldn't find a problem with the camera. But this was using Maxim not Sequence Generator Pro.
The camera was sent back to me, no charge, and took 4 days to get here.
A bit quicker than the trip over what with customs being customs.

I tried the camera on my laptop and of course it didn't work.

Lets start again.
I reformatted the laptop I use for astro stuff. I did not really want to do this as it all worked without a hitch, mount, focuser, guider etc, until the camera started to play up.
Reinstalled Windows and ASCOM, new install of Sequence Generator Pro and, drum roll, the latest drivers from QSI.

The camera would not take an image and download it on the first attempt.
Didn't matter if it was Frame and Focus or an image in the Sequencing window for those familiar with SGP. Second and subsequent images were OK.

Oh dear, almost back to square one.
Sent an email to SGP and they sent back the error code issued by the QSI driver so I could send it on to Atik. Atik said they had not seen this before and maybe I should try an older driver.

After doing some research I found that there is lots of discussions on Cloudy Nights about QSI drivers. Especially since Atik took them over.

I was able to download a very old original QSI driver, 7.4.1824.0, from Cloudy Nights. Various people seem to have had success with this driver.

So, remove new QSI driver and install the, very, old one.
What did I have to lose as I had already wiped everything and started again.

Works like a charm.

So this whole saga goes back to installing new drivers for no good reason and not being aware enough to remember what I had done and going back to what had worked in the past. Also when we had the old drivers on a CD it was easy to go back. Of course I couldn't find my original CD after 6 years.

It is disappointing that new drivers can cause such problems. I don't really know why Atik did not suggest that this may be a driver problem and to try an old one before I shipped the camera to the UK. There are 2 drivers on the QSI site, neither of which worked for me.
It seems this has happened to many other people as well.

In the future I will not change anything if everything is working well.
Live and learn, even at the ripe old age of 71.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Greg

Last edited by HarryD; 28-11-2020 at 08:45 PM. Reason: Bad grammer
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