M1 Crab Nebula on Boxing Day

[Tony G]

the equipment only does what its told to do

I hate conspiracy theorists. 

Tony G

[Mac]

Just worked out the common denominator.
why everything crashes.

Windows 

[Carole]

Excuse the pun, but does Mac have a Mac then?

[Mac]

Excuse the pun, but does Mac have a Mac then?

Nope, I have a mini Mac. 1 on the 13th.

But i normally use windows 2000!!!!!! or NT4 if i can.

The problems is windows xp is not really designed to run 72 pieces of software, ect,ect without having problems.
100'000 's of dll config files one huge registry. conflicting drivers ect,ect. Try installing office200 & adobe acrobat and then open a powerpoint presentation. Powerpoint will always hang and then use 100% of the cpu, why, incompatibility.

I've got a totally separate xp partition which has an absolute minimum system installed, (i.e. all the crap you never use removed)
and then I only install the software i need. This is totally separate from my other xp system that has all the other junk on.

So i have:
Win xp (small)
starry night,
all the drivers for my cameras including Nikon & Canon
maxim 5
fits viewer
photoshop. (dont realy need this as i can use the one on my other system)
registax
deepsky stacker
ascom drivers
filter wheel drivers.
EQMOD
Pole align max

and thats about it.

does my windows crash on a regular basis or give me problems,  hmmmmm, nope, once in a blue moon, it is windows you know.
i dont install any service packs, anti virus or firewalls. (ONLY ON THIS SYSTEM - IF YOU CONNECT TO THE INTERNET THROUGH YOUR SYSTEM INSTALL THEM I CONNECT THROUGH MY SERVER)

my other system with all the other software is forever giving me problems.

Worth a thought.
This is what i did for fays one and set up a separate partition for her astronomy stuff.

Mac.

[The Thing]

This sounds like a great approach Mac. I have always tried to keep this laptop 'clean' as it was bought for astronomy - I have a desktop for the other stuff. However (the usual 'however') the laptop runs VISTA   . I agree XP would be a better bet. I have NT4 SP6 somewhere, they'd finally got the bugs out by that service pack

Yesterday I worked out that it was the USB active extension cable that didn't agree with the the Prolific USB 4x Serial port cable adapter I got recently from USBNow ('cos I needed a 4th COM port for the Lakeside focuser). I tried two 1.5m standard USB extensions and they work fine (no extra drivers in the way).

Hopefully all will be well at DSC next weekend. 

[Carole]

Hopefully all will be well at DSC next weekend

Blimey are you guys still going in these temperatures!!??

That sounds like a good idea Mac, I always think they put too much crap on laptops that you don't need, but I never know what's safe to delete and what's not, so daren't touch it.  I'd be quite happy for whoever converts my Vista to XP to delete a lot of this stuff.

Carole

[RobertM]

Yesterday I worked out that it was the USB active extension cable that didn't agree with the the Prolific USB 4x Serial port cable adapter

Hmmm, I use an active usb extender (12m in total) to USB2 powered hub to Prolific 4 port serial hub without problem now, though I did have an issue last year which only a reinstall fixed... (painful process that!).  Could it be that you're not getting enough power through to the Prolific?

Robert

[Mac]

I always think they put too much crap on laptops that you don't need, but I never know what's safe to delete and what's not

goto your control panel and select add / remove software, or whatever vistas called it now.
and using that you can remove everything that has been installed, safely, including some but not all windows components.

its a starting point, when you get round to installing windows xp, just do a custom install and only install the bits you want,

Windows 98 can be stripped down to 5meg!
xp down to about 350Mb,

Mac.

[The Thing]

Could it be that you're not getting enough power through to the Prolific?

I thought of that but didn't want to add a further layer of hub drivers.