Starlight Xpress SXV-M25C - Manual (Page 2)

Handbook for the SXV-M25C Issue 1 June 2004
2
The USB 2 connection offers an excellent download speed, despite the very large
number of pixels to be digitised. The full-frame download time with a 2GHz machine
is approximately 16 seconds and binned 4x4 downloads take only 3 seconds, so
finding and centring are quick and easy in this mode. If you have only a USB 1.1
connection on your computer, the download time is longer, but is still quite fast at
around 30 seconds for a full resolution frame.
Please take a few minutes to study the contents of this manual, which will help you to
get the camera into operation quickly and without problems. I am sure that you want
to see some results as soon as possible, so please move on to the ‘Quick Start’ section,
which follows. A more detailed description of imaging techniques will be found in a
later part of this manual.
‘Quick Starting’ your SXV-M25C system
In the shipping container you will find the following items:
1) The SXV-M25C camera head.
2) A power supply module.
3) A power supply cable.
4) An SXV guider head.
5) A cable for the guider head to camera connection.
6) An RJ11 cable for connection of the guide output to the mount.
7) A USB2 camera cable.
8) An adaptor for 2” drawtubes and M42 Pentax thread lenses.
9) A disk with the SXV-M25C control software.
10) This manual.
Optional extra items include:
1) A serial port splitter adaptor and cable for filter wheels etc.
You will also need a PC computer with Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000
or Windows XP installed (NOT Windows 95 or NT4). This machine must have at
least one USB port available and at least 128 Megs of memory. If you intend to view
the finished images on its screen, then you will also need a graphics card capable of
displaying an image with a minimum of 1024 x 768 pixels and 16,000,000 colours.
The very large image format means that viewing the entire image at full resolution is
not practical, but a 1600 x 1200 monitor resolution with 32 bit colour helps
considerably. A medium specification Pentium with between 1 and 2GHz processor
speed is ideal. USB 2 PCI and PCMCIA cards are readily available for upgrading a
USB 1.1 machine, if you want to achieve the best possible performance. Please note
that USB 2.0 operates at a very high speed and cannot operate over very long cables.
Five metres of good quality cable is the maximum normally permitted. Adding one, or
more, USB 2 ‘Hubs’ in line can extend this, if necessary. USB 1.1 is more tolerant
and will often work properly over a 15 metre lead without hubs.