Recommended drivers for ASI 120mm USB2.0

[mark4color]

I recently installed SharpCap 3.2 on a new Wndows 10 laptop (Dell Inspiron) that has 2 USB 3.0 ports plus 1 USB 2.0 port.
I have been using a ASI120mm for a couple of years now on an older computer (Dell XPS), connected to SharpCap 3.1.5220 running in a Windows 7 environment. The older machine has only USB 2.0 ports. That setup worked quite well for a couple of years..
In Windows 10, however, SharpCap 3.2 drops almost all the frames and reports an effective speed of <0.2 fps. This is the case regardless of which USB port I connect to.
In Win7, by contrast, with the same camera and cable connected, SharpCap 3.1 captures almost all the frames and reports fps better 8 fps (which is all I need for the lunar imaging I am doing). As a sanity check, I reconnected to the old machine, after the problems appeared in the Win10 configuration, and the camera operated normally. I then tried reusing all the camera control settings from the 3.1 version on the 3.2 version; but nothing improved.

What's going on? There are a lot of variables to check: SharpCap 3.1 vs. 3.2; ZWO drivers 3.0.0.4 vs 3.0.0.7; USB 3.0 vs 2.0?.
Do you know of any reason to prefer SharpCap 3.1 for an older ASI 120mm?

Thanks in advance,
MarkO

[admin]

Hi,

are you running the camera in 16 bit mode? I do recall there were issues with older ZWO cameras in 16 bit mode with the latest ZWO software.

cheers, Robin

[chongo228]

The 120mm and 120mc are known to have a lot of issues and not work well. Last I read the problem was never fixed and they just replaced it with the "-S" model. If I remember correctly the cameras work sometimes but have a lot of bugs and issues. I don't think ZWO ever did anything to make it right...the owners of these cameras were just stuck with a bad product.


Below is one of the many threads about it.


https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/5721 ... -asi120mc/

[oopfan]

the owners of these cameras were just stuck with a bad product

Mine died a slow, tortured death and froze up after working for 10 minutes. Now it doesn't even make a good doorstop

Brian

[turfpit]

RAW8, USB2 only viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1908
Troublesome in a USB3 port.

Dave

[mark4color]

Hi,

are you running the camera in 16 bit mode? I do recall there were issues with older ZWO cameras in 16 bit mode with the latest ZWO software.

cheers, Robin

The performance now is identical whether in MONO8 or MONO16. And also, it's identical on the Win7 box running SharpCap 3.1 via a USB 2.0 port: That is, it works fine in both MONO8 and MONO16. I am tempted to down-rev both the ZWO driver and SharpCap, and see what happens.

MarkO

[mark4color]

I don't think ZWO ever did anything to make it right...the owners of these cameras were just stuck with a bad product.

Below is one of the many threads about it.


https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/5721 ... -asi120mc/

I have seen some of these threads and would be inclined to 'move on' from the 120MM, except that the camera has been working flawlessly for the past 2 years when hooked up to my 8-year-old Win7 box (for my purposes, at least, which are mainly the focusing algorithms in SharpCap). It's only now that Microsoft has moved me ahead to Win10 that any problems are appeared.

MarkO