ASI 120mm and Windows 7: Frames splitting randomly

francisco sc

Hi,

I have an AS120mm (non-S version) which I have been happily using with a Windows-XP based laptop for guiding with PHD2. That laptop died, so I replaced it with a Windows-7 Pro laptop (64 bits).

With this new laptop, every now and then the frame displayed in PHD2 splits, the right part of it appearing on the left side and vice-versa. This of course makes the program loose the guide star. If I stop guiding and re-start capturing frames, the star is back to its position for some time; then again the frame splits and star is lost. Sometimes it happens every 2-4 minutes, sometimes as brief as 15 seconds!

This of course makes it impossible to guide using this camera unatttended. Any hints?

Note: the USB ports in this laptop are all USB 2.0.

francisco sc

Yesterday I did some more checks and found that camera was working in 16bit depth. Changed to 8 bit and apparently the problem disappeared, it managed to do a 5 hours session with no split frames.

However, the only way I found to select 8bit is when using the ASCOM driver in PHD2. Is there a way in the camera's driver to set the bit depth?

Thanks.

Sam@ZWO

Francisco SC wrote:
Yesterday I did some more checks and found that camera was working in 16bit depth. Changed to 8 bit and apparently the problem disappeared, it managed to do a 5 hours session with no split frames.

However, the only way I found to select 8bit is when using the ASCOM driver in PHD2. Is there a way in the camera's driver to set the bit depth?

Thanks.

no, only ASCOM allow you to select 16bit