Hyper Utility for Windows 98 SE?

[Roadking8]

The nicer (I've been told) conversion software (Hyper Utility) came with my USA version S2 along with the standard LE version. I had USB up and running so my first cnversions have been via USB and the LE software. Total time to copy/paste/convert to TIFF is about 110 minutes per image. That USB 1.1 is killing me. So I get a firewire card and install only to find out that the Hyper Utility won't load on my Win 98se machine....it's only suitable for Win2000 or XP. Is there a Win98SE version? If not, is there a compatible converter for Win98se? If none of the above, what OS should I use? Sheesh. All I want to do is take nice pictures.

Road

[memobug]

I don't think there is a 98/SE version, but you should be able to get a firewire CompactFlash reader for about $35-40. That should ease the bottleneck

Regards,

Matt

[airpic]

@Roadking8

There is no Hyper Utility EX version available which runs under 98/SE. Personally I would move to Windows 2000 as it is more stable than XP.

Christoph

[Eorge]

Win ME is good to (according to manual)
regards George

[Roadking8]

Well, the hyper utility wants a new os from me. It seems you have to buy a separate XP for each computer you have and I have 3 so I will go with Windows 2000 and load on all. But while I am reloading the os on one of them, it seems a good time to replace the "old" PS3 733, 512Mb Ram with a P4 2.4 and 512Ram. Oh...I need a new motherboard too... and a power supply...and a video card. Darn...that hyper utility better be good. It cost me $800...ha. Just feel sorry for 'ol Bill Gates and thought I should send him some more money.

Road

[Wichita Wayne]

You don't have to put up with all the XP quirks and it is rock solid stable. I can leave my computer on for days and days without any lockups of glitches. The only thing that gives me trouble are old CF card readers, the new FlashGO USB 2.0 works great, and my HP PhotoSmart S20 scanner gives me trouble unless I boot with it hooked up and then reboot without it when I finish.

[Swampy]

Originally posted by Roadking8
Well, the hyper utility wants a new os from me. It seems you have to buy a separate XP for each computer you have and I have 3 so I will go with Windows 2000 and load on all. But while I am reloading the os on one of them, it seems a good time to replace the "old" PS3 733, 512Mb Ram with a P4 2.4 and 512Ram. Oh...I need a new motherboard too... and a power supply...and a video card. Darn...that hyper utility better be good. It cost me $800...ha. Just feel sorry for 'ol Bill Gates and thought I should send him some more money.

Road

A co-worker was telling me about a deal from Dell that went something like this:

P4 2.4ghz
512mb DDR ram
30gb hard drive
Basically the whole PC minus keyboard, mouse, monitor for 300 or 400 bucks each, if you bought 2. Sounds like that may be a deal you'd want to look into. I won't see him until tomorrow, and if you want, I'll have him track the deal down again and I'll post it.

1 copy for 3 machines? I'll just say you can do it with XP. We're not supposed to talk about that here though. :)

[Roadking8]

Wayne...like your "buy locally" philosophy, I deal with a local PC supplier/installer that caters to businesses. They told me today that they personally run XP but recommended 2000 because it is so solid and that is is less phinicky about some older programs (dos-based). It doesn't care for them but it can be made to tolerate them. They did warn me that so equipment might want different drivers so perhaps your cited printer and scanner could be needing new driver downloads from manufacturer website. If that doesn't cure it, it could be software (but I doubt yours are dos-based). Win2000 will be the last os offered loadable on multiple machines. I am so looking forward to the P4 2.4 and USB 2.0. How does that USB compare with Firewire speed? Of course I need firwire for shooting. Look for a new thread under software topic.
Road

[Swampy]

Originally posted by Wayne
You don't have to put up with all the XP quirks and it is rock solid stable.

I've got a mix of 4 or 5 Windows 2000 and 3 or 4 Xp machines here at my house and both have thier drawbacks. Windows 2000 and recognizing certain hardware, as you point out with some of your hardware and XP taking what I think is a step backwards towards Windows 98 with it's stability. Seems that XP has been Microsofted so hard that all the built in features actually drag it down. My machines are 2000, except my laptop with XP, where the Wife and daughter use XP and my son uses 2000. My servers are all 2000 as well. So you can look at it this way... 2000 is Manly (strong/solid) and XP is feminine (delicate). XP does suspend and boot up nice and fast though.

For me, I'll stick with Windows 2000, I mean, if it doesn't detect the hardware automatcally and work, then there's a driver out there for it, or it's just THAT old and you'd want to replace it anyway.

[Swampy]

Originally posted by Roadking8
How does that USB compare with Firewire speed? Of course I need firwire for shooting. Look for a new thread under software topic.
Road

USB 2.0 and Firewire...

Firewire devices usually needs to be daisy chained together, meaning no hub, or 1 or very few ports to use. Firewire is also 400mb/s. Plenty fast for today's applications and the hardware that needs to be written to through the Firewire.

USB 2.0 is 480mb/s and can be used on a hub. Not much faster than Firewire, but remember, it all depends on the rest of the equipment that it's going to.

Unless you're like me (1000mb/s), the most you probably have is 100mb/s on the network and your drive(s) will probably only hit around 150-200mb/s unless you're doing some high performance raid in which case you could actually hit the 500mb and up range. I would gather you would only see that on a server however, with 20 drives running, not your workstation, so you'll still find yourself limited to 100mb/s. And even me, my servers are the only thing that are 1000mb/s, my workstations are still at 100mb/s. Other things can factor into the speed as well, such as multiple drive volumes, where you could physically have two or more raid sets that will handle 300mb/s each, a 1000mb/s connection directly to the server, at which case will allow you to pump the full 400-480mb/s speeds through to your server.

It's all relative some more with network traffic and collisions and non-ceritifed network cabling/jacks. Now cost comes in. Expensive switches that have full speed, non-blocking ports (say a 48 port 10/100 switch should have a backplane of 4800mb/s could cost you $4500 bucks.

Firewire/USB 2.0. I don't care. Someone just standardize or use both in the same devices. USB is nice where you don't daisychain though. Where will it stop? What about the new Firewire that's coming out at over 800mb/s? People need to set a standard and stick with it for more than a year. Did I hear Centronics? Yeah, the 20 year old printer connection standard is STILL here. Albeit, there's been a few changes, but it's still the same ports, just different speeds and complete backward compatibility to day 1. Look at the floppy. Same deal. Serial anyone? Sure they're not the fastest, but you know when you buy something with that standard, it's going to work. I better get off this soapbox before someone really starts to get mad at me. :)

[Swampy]

Ok, here's the link to how to get the Dell system cheap. It's only 128mg DDR ram though, but everything else is right and it comes with Windows XP Home addition. $646 out the door for TWO of them.

Read the first message here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=40&threadid=958932&highlight_key=y&keyword1=dell

[Wichita Wayne]

I have used SCSI for years and it is only now that Firewire and USB are getting close to the speed of SCSI. My SCSI Zip drives have always been nearly as fast as my internal hard drives. What we really need is a digital camera with a wireless interface via Ultra SCSI, and make it work up to 300 feet away. The total cost for the unit should be kept to under $500. The S2 could get rid of the 123s and use the space for the wireless interface and its battery that extends under the camera like a normal battery pack. You could use Firewire or USB for the interface but SCSI would be like greased lightning. It could also be used to remotely trigger your studio flashes by pluging them into the device plugged into the computers SCSI port that provides wireless interfact to the camera.

So much for my dreaming.

[steve bingham]

The trouble with getting internet advice is most of it is WRONG.
Raw File Convertor EX works great with Windows 98. The installation notes are incorrect. Ignore them and load it up. I use Windows 98 and it is rock solid. No need to go to a new platform or OS.

Incidently, when converting raw files from the camera do not do one after the other. If you load one raw file it takes 20 seconds to download (with firewire). If you load a second file it takes 2 MINUTES to download. However, it you load both at the same time it takes 20 seconds EACH. Or, shut off the camera after each load. Strange.

Basically, the camera/software is giving you one chance to use some sort of memory per turn on. Down load 1, or 80 files at one time and they take 20 seconds each. Do it in steps and you will be hateing life - unless you restart the camera.

The times above are for files shot at 12 meg in the raw format. Pentium 4 running at 2 gig with firewire. This camera gives incredible performance in the 12 meg raw format mode (I have some 24" x 36" prints with the Epson 7600). Raw format also gives you a chance to adjust the exposure.

SUPER TIP: When converting raw format you can convert one file more than once if you rename it. One file captures the highlights. One normal. One captures all the shadows. By layering in Photoshop and using simple tools such as the eraser tool, it is possible to get another 4 STOPS of range to use in your images. Open up shadows, keep highlights from burning.

[Swampy]

Originally posted by steve bingham
Incidently, when converting raw files from the camera do not do one after the other. If you load one raw file it takes 20 seconds to download (with firewire). If you load a second file it takes 2 MINUTES to download. However, it you load both at the same time it takes 20 seconds EACH. Or, shut off the camera after each load. Strange.

Basically, the camera/software is giving you one chance to use some sort of memory per turn on. Down load 1, or 80 files at one time and they take 20 seconds each. Do it in steps and you will be hateing life - unless you restart the camera.



This is most likely a read ahead buffer in windows that you are experiencing. What happens is windows reads the first file to where ever you are copying it to, and immediately after that finishes, it loads the next file into cache because it thinks you're going to grab that one next (logically). You could probably verify that by not taking the next photo and grabbing a photo that's further down the line. I could b wrong, but that's probably what it is.

Bryan

[steve bingham]

Not sure why this would effect the second download time. If you download one file and it is completed, and then start downloading a second image file you would think the buffer would be EMPTY. How would it know I had in mind a second file to be downloaded later? I think the buffer is grabbed one time, and one time only per turn on of the camera. I think the buffer feature is turned OFF after you have completed one download, whether it be one image or 60 images. Just guessing, of course. In any case, the work-around is nice to know about.

[Wichita Wayne]

The buffer is a random access or virtual memory used by caching software to store the next logical sector of data. It always reads a little ahead in anticipation of your next request for data. Keep in mind it does not know when the current file starts and stops. All it knows is that you are reading sequential sectors and when the computer tells the cache to stop it stops. But it is uaually always a few sectors ahead of the requests. And it keeps those sectors in the buffer "just in case". If the buffer is large enough it can hold a complete file. I think sombody else posted here that it took 2 minutes to download a file the first time and only 20 sec. to download the same file a second time. This is because the entire file was still in the buffer. So the cache program did not have to go to the hard disk or CF card to get the file the second time, all it had to do was read it from the RAM that is set up to be the buffer.

[steve bingham]

Thanks. Good to know. This still does not explain the phenomenon I described.

[Roadking8]

Sorry for delayed response. Many changes to PC. I choose to update to Windows 2000. It does seem to be more "manly" and robust than Win98. I found no problems with hardware compat. (so far). I updated my processor and ram while I was there. This change allowed the EX version to run (although I seem to just "convert all" using the "camera settings"). The only drawback I had was that Win98, using Western Digital Lifeguard, allowed me to make complete bootable backups of my OS/Software drive, as well any data drives, easily. I have found a way to do this with Winn2000 but it is longer. But it works. In general, I found XP to be a good system for PC's that don't change much but I resent the way Microsoft is becoming so "personal" with our personal computers. I'm afraid the reality of their grip is becoming more evident.

Wayne's comments on the cache is correct. First fie is quicker than ones that follow. It's basically a "when does the memory get flushed and avialable for new stuff" issue. Sometimes, when processing gets hot and heavy, I have to quit and restart Photoshop to speed up the actions.

FYI, I just had my first larger commercial shoot for a big sign, promo company. The shots will be used at a tradeshow. Quite an experience. I learned three things...the client knows less about what they want than you do...lighting is crucial (and I don't have what I need)...and allocate lots of time and thought. It ain't as easy as it looks.

Road

[steve bingham]

"and I don't have what I need" You can never be too rich, too good looking, or have too much lighting equipment. My lighting cost considerably more than my camera equipment. Lighting is everything. Thank God those days are gone. Now I just futz around and have fun.