I didn't believe it wouldn't work so I had to try it too! :-)

I tried an older bus toaster... in both 7.11 and Maxim, everything
works but downloading a picture :-( I wasn't surprised at the identical
behavior; Amy told me that (under some arrangement that she didn't tell
me about) that Maxim is using the Meade DLL to control the camera.
To those that believe Maxim is a better application: It's simply a better
_ application _ .

>From what little I know about SCSI, I believe that the programmer must
have done something "on purpose" to force the SCSI read commands to be
incompatible with 16 bit devices.

The older SCSI works fine with 6.45; it's a little slower downloading.

I'm disappointed in the direction that the SCSI support seems to be going
in. It appears that they are in a race condition to read the image. "Going
faster" doesn't win the race, it only means that it fail a smaller percentage
of the time. Right now, that percentage may be very low. But it is inevitable
that faster computers and who-knows-what changes in future OS's are
bound to make this device obsolete.

In the mean time ... reading Meade's installation and SCSI compatibility
notes is really important. "Compatibility" is already reduced. That said,
I haven't yet read of a case (so I'm sure folks will tell me!) where following
the directions didn't resulting in getting the SCSI connection to work.
(And I'm certainly not saying the documentation is that clear!)

I'm still very new to 416/SCSI. I've read here, searched the archives,
read sci.astro.ccd-imaging and talked to Meade several times. Here's
a "mini-FAQ" of the most common problems that I've seen:

1) Not installing EZSCSI first. It's a frustrating problem because
adaptec's tools see the CCD (as a scanner) but pictorview doesn't.
Uninstall pictorview and reinstall it.

2) Selecting the proper .ini file. (I understand that this is better in 7.x)

3) Not having the 416 as the only device on the SCSI controller ...
actually works sometimes, but it's back to the "race condition";
the rate of communications failure goes up.

4) You get the thing installed properly; check it with EZSCSI and
but pictorview doesn't see it ... You need to connect with pictorview
and only pictorview. (This one bugs me because I know that SCSI-1
provides better support than that. On old Sun Unix systems, we
plugged in and unplugged disks and tape drives and (after a rescan
of the SCSI bus) the devices worked fine ... I don't think that Meade
is doing even a full implementation of SCSI-1.

5) _ After _ you get it all connected and you take your first image
it's all gray ... The "automatic histogram equalization" is only so-so
on daylight images; it tries to find a picture and sometime equalizes
improperly ... if you open-up the equalization window and spread the
top and bottom to encompass the data, you'll probably see your picture.


The good news is that once you have it working, it tends to stay working!

As a closing note: I've used systems with "special" hardware before
and been burned by OS upgrades. If you share the computer with
the family for games and whatever, you're setting yourself up for
problems later. I'm not saying that you to need to dedicate the system
to imaging; but expect to maintain your system to be compatible with
the 416, not for Meade to maintain compatibility with whatever you do
to your system... you just spent (probably) $2000+ for your imager;
a perfectly compatible laptop can be found on ebay for about what
you'd pay for MaximDL/CCD ...

Hope that helps,

- Ed.





> Cathy Nanz
> Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2000 4:10 PM
> Subject: Re: [M]: 416XT and SCSI
>
> I am having the same problem and I am running windows 98. But I can say I
> saw the
> 1460 card working with my camera but on another laptop running windows 95=
> &
> pictor 6.45. (The other port on my computer works the camera just fine bu=
> t
> slow.)

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