LX problems so did Saturn instead

[Carole]

Thanks John,

and thanks every-one else it's all useful information for better understanding.

I'll wait for John to check.

Carole

[Carole]

John took away my camera and laptop today and has confirmed that there is nothing wrong with the camera as it worked fine on his laptop.  He has very kindly spent a lot of time today trying to get it to work and has been unable to and says it has to be an issue with the laptop but does not know what can be wrong.  (He's also tried eliminating the serial port but that didn't make any difference).  (I have forwarded John's E Mail to Ian so he can see what John has done as John wondered whether Ian might have any more ideas).

So I'm pretty stuck now unless I buy a new laptop by the looks of things.
Like Fay I don't want Vista, has any-one any further ideas or suggestions?

Carole

[Ian]

didn't get any email from you carole, did you use the yahoo addy?

Serial ports are in theory at least simpler than parallel ones. Not helpful, I know...

[Carole]

Whoops, I think I might have E mailed you at Thrupoint even though you are in my address book at Yahoo. 

Will send again

Carole

[Ian]

got it now, thx. I'll have to sleep on it.

[Mac]

If you want me to have a look, i'm more then happy.
It might be worth bringing it to the meeting on thursday.

Mac.

[JohnP]

It's weird Carole's laptop does have a dedicated RS232 - I tried giving the port a different number & also installed my USB to RS232 but regardless of what I tried I could not get camera to work in LX mode. However, It worked no probs on my laptop with the same USB to RS232 adapter. Camera seems to work in normal capture mode on her laptop though.

All I can say is laptop seems quite unstable - I had to do a lot of rebooots etc. so maybe there is a conflict somewhere. The only thing I could suggest is a total reformat of hard disk & put in drivers/ try again... I'll leave it to you comuter pro's...

John

[Rocket Pooch]

John,

I have travelled for years on a train and I would not know where to start with this problem, so I'm not sure being a comuter is a qualification for hardware setup.

Chris

[JohnP]

Ha.. Ha.. Just testing you mate.... Sure you learn how to fix loads of things while your commuting on that train so a laptop shouldn't be any problem...

COMPUTER PRO's.......

John.

PS - I feel like crap today - sore throat, blocked nose etc. so blame typo on that...

[Carole]

If you want me to have a look, i'm more then happy.
It might be worth bringing it to the meeting on thursday.

If you wouldn't mind Mac.

I'll bring the camera, laptop & installation disk (forgot to give that to John), to the meeting tomorrow.

Many thanks Mac.

I already E mailed my thanks to John for all the time he has put in on this, but this is a public thank you as well.

Sorry to have to burden others with this.

Carole

[Fay]

Carole, that is quite a nice & Saturn, hope you get your problems sorted.

[Carole]

Mac,

Can I bring my laptop and camera to the next meeting for you to take a look at?
Will you be there?

Please take it away with you as I imagine you will need some time on it.  I'll see if I can arrange for some-one to bring me over to you to pick up when you've finished.

Jim you spoke to me about using a ?parallel port but I think John's already tried that.  I'll also bring your camera back to you at the meeting.

Carole

[Mac]

aye, that'll be no problems,
I've got my head stuffed in my degree at the mo,

got to get the last project finished by next week.

[Carole]

Thanks Mac, Ken's bringing me to the meeting, so hopefully he'll help me carry things.  Glad you will have finished your degree work before I lumber you with this.

Carole

[Mac]

Update,

Had a good look this morning at your PC. (about 10-12 mins, any longer and its normally a very serious problem.)

As i said last night the parallel port was only set up as Bidirectional as opposed to EPP (Extended parallel port).

However on booting and checking the bios again this morning the PC hadn't saved the settings.
There might be an issue there with the bios, but it might have been me just forgetting to save the settings.
i'll check again next time i have a look at it.

Problem 1). It looks like your windows, might need to be reinstalled, as its constantly Blue screening, as well as generating errors on boot.
                (i'll look in to that next week and se if it can be fixed easily).

Problem 2) The camera didnt like to be used from windows explorer. (Normally you get a link similar to a hard disk, that when you click on it you can see the video image)
               This would indicate that the drivers have either been corrupted or havent installed correctly or the camera is faulty..
               removed and reinstalled the drivers and now the camera works in Explorer. (Indicating the camera and drivers are now all ok.)

Problem 3) Top USB MIGHT not be working correctly  or a cable fault on the connection to the camera! see below.

Using K3 i was getting images from the camera, tried it on 5secs 10 secs even 60 secs.
Everything was fine, Getting dark images, light images, ect,ect.
BUT, it then threw the error, unable to identify USB device, please replug.
The fan on the back of the device was slowing down and speeding up, ever so slightly, just before the error.

Possible reasons for this is that the USB port is not able to supply enough power to the device or cable problem to the device, or even the camera starting to fail.
However, changing to the bottom port, seemed to rectify the problem,
and the camera worked again with out a hitch, untill i tried to move the camera to a darker location.
When i moved the camera it stopped responding, same error, but on closer inspection, if i moved the cable near to the cable tie,
I could get the camera to fail with the error, (possible break in the camera cable at the cable tie)
So there might be an issue there with the cable, or it might be a coincidence, and just be a power issue with the usb ports.

I'll have a longer play with it next week, and see if i can sort out your windows problems as well.

Mac.