Cameca firmware oddities

[UofO EPMA Lab]

Has anyone else noticed this oddity on their SX100?

Every so often we notice that the coarse and fine focus knobs seem to "switch roles" in that the coarse knob becomes the fine focus and the fine knob becomes the coarse focus.  Not a big deal, but just wondering if anyone else has observed this on their instrument?

We're running PeakSight 6.2 and the firmware that comes with the new software, but it used to do this same "switcheroo" with the old software and firmware, so maybe it's a hardware addressing issue?

[sem-geologist]

Never remember such stuff on our SX100, and never had heard about it from previous operator (machine have 18 years).  BTW, why PeakSigh 6.2? It has much less features, it is more often crashing and locking/freezing and it has completely moronic UI compared with 5.x. Maybe your machine had electronics upgrade?

[neko]

I have noticed that the fine focus seems to change the level it focuses at depending on your zoom level, when zoomed out the fine focus seems to be much more rough and the rough focus works better, but when you're zoomed in they work the way they're supposed to. Is yours just switching randomly?

Some of our knobs sometimes make a weird electronic clicking from time to time, but this doesn't seem to affect anything, other than making the control panel sound like a charming cricket for a couple minutes.

[Probeman]

I have noticed that the fine focus seems to change the level it focuses at depending on your zoom level, when zoomed out the fine focus seems to be much more rough and the rough focus works better, but when you're zoomed in they work the way they're supposed to. Is yours just switching randomly?

Some of our knobs sometimes make a weird electronic clicking from time to time, but this doesn't seem to affect anything, other than making the control panel sound like a charming cricket for a couple minutes.

Hi Nick,
Yes.  On our SX100 what I see happen is that the coarse and fine focus sometimes seem to swap functionality from time to time in a random fashion. That is sometimes they are normal, and sometimes the fine focus is the coarse focus (and visa versa).
john

[neko]

So you (sorry, obvious dumb question here) have the same SX100 control panel that's legacy from the SX50? And I'm guessing this problem didn't occur until after you updated to 6.2?

That seems like something that would be firmware controlled, and I'm really hoping the software isn't updating the firmware randomly, but I also assume that 6.2 comes with updated firmware and maybe that has a bug in it?

Other than that, you got me. Sounds like the type of mystery problem I usually have, so you have my sympathies.

[Probeman]

Hi Nick,
No this is the SX100 "knob panel" that I think every SX100 has.

And no, this switching of the fine and coarse focus knob functions has been occurring from the beginning since v. 4 of PeakSight, and yes, it may have been fixed in the firmware update that came with v. 6.2 of PeakSight.  At least I haven't noticed it since this summer when I updated to PeakSight 6.2.

More on this a bit later.
john