Another tale of imaging woe

[MarkS]

Tonight I thought I'd get 2 or 3 hours imaging before the moon came up.
BUT ...
1) My Windows 10 laptop had updated the driver for the Prolific chipset in my HitecAstro EQDIR mount connection so it would no longer connect to the mount. So I had to manually revert back to the old driver.
2) The software I wrote to drive the Sony A7S failed to connect to PHD to perform the dithering.
3) Rather than waste the evening I reverted back to my Windows XP laptop which worked fine until it lost the Sony camera connection.
4) Clouds then came over
5) I then gave up!

Luckily I've now found the minor bug in my software - a dot in the wrong place in the SocketServer connection string.  It worked fine in Windows XP, in Windows 7 and even in Windows 10 until the latest Windows update which clearly has more careful connection checking.

In any case, I'm glad I ironed out these issues before Kelling Heath.

Mark

[Fay]

Gosh Mark, that looked like a post Carole or Me would usually put on!!

[Mike]

Good job you tried it all out before you left for Kelling.

[MarkS]

So tonight, Sunday night, I found Windows 10 had automatically re-installed the new Prolific driver (again!) so the laptop wouldn't connect to the mount again.  I've again had to put the old driver back.

I've just been outside to check my imaging session, only to find that the laptop and rebooted itself and installed Windows updates - halfway through an imaging session whilst all my imaging programs were still running.  Not impressed!

I need to switch off all this stuff that W10 is doing automatically.

Mark

[Carole]

Just the sort of annoying thing that these new systems tend to do, which is why I prefer to let sleeping dogs lie and continue to use what works even if it is an older operating system.  As you say the last thing you want is an update in the middle of an imaging session. 

Sorry to hear your tale of woe Mark.

Carole

[The Thing]

So tonight, Sunday night, I found Windows 10 had automatically re-installed the new Prolific driver (again!) so the laptop wouldn't connect to the mount again.  I've again had to put the old driver back.

I've just been outside to check my imaging session, only to find that the laptop and rebooted itself and installed Windows updates - halfway through an imaging session whilst all my imaging programs were still running.  Not impressed!

I need to switch off all this stuff that W10 is doing automatically.

Mark

After I upgraded my laptop to Win 10 I did a Google search of everything that could be turned off. It still reboots itself sometimes and there are still background processes trying to get weather and stock reports and all sorts of other garbage that I haven't been able to disable (yet), every now and again the laptop goes into overdrive trying to get onto the internet which it can't do in the obsy as the gigbit ethernet connection is only to my main pc indoors. It's a pain but seems reliable nonetheless and it doesn't crash (mind you rebooting while imaging is just as bad!).

[RobertM]

Ah yes the Prolific driver... not all Prolific chipsets are made equal, especially those that actually aren't Prolific as is the Hitech EQDIRECT !  Unfortunately it has a cheapo clone chipset in it, Prolific updated the driver to recognise only the genuine article which is why the later drivers no longer work.  I got fed up with with all those naff driver updates and changed to a FTDI chipset (of which I posted details on a separate thread).  No driver troubles now and it always starts on the same COM port

Robert

[MarkS]

Ah yes the Prolific driver... not all Prolific chipsets are made equal, especially those that actually aren't Prolific as is the Hitech EQDIRECT !  Unfortunately it has a cheapo clone chipset in it, Prolific updated the driver to recognise only the genuine article which is why the later drivers no longer work.  I got fed up with with all those naff driver updates and changed to a FTDI chipset (of which I posted details on a separate thread).  No driver troubles now and it always starts on the same COM port

Robert

Ah - that makes sense.  I did wonder why a Prolific driver update should scupper it.

Mark

[Carole]

Gosh Mark, that looked like a post Carole or Me would usually put on!!

I think Fay and I would be lost with all this jargon etc.

Carole