Help with Retinal Camera

[Kyle]

Ok,

This is for you equipment geeks out there.

We're using the TRC-NW6S retinal camera from Topcon. The camera itself is a Nikon D-100.

We're getting an error message would seemingly indicates the camera cannot be found, "Failed to select an item object of Nikon D-100". This is followed by, "Memory allocation error for the image buffer". Both messages will appear if/when the camera is not turned on and in this case, according to Topcon, supposedly point to a faulty on-camera USB port.

Here's the rub: when I remove the camera from the fixed lens, keeping all cables attached as they would be for normal retinal camera use, and I replace that lens with a lens from my personal kit (in this case an 18-200 zoom), the camera operates "normally" in that the machine mounted remote trigger operates the camera shutter, captures the image and then moves it to the image buffer for review. This simply couldn't happen if the USB port were faulty.

Topcon didn't have an answer and wanted to charge me 200 bux an hour to tell me I needed a new camera body. I've contacted Lombart and am waiting to hear from them and it seems like they may be on the same page as me, pointing less to the camera and more to the machine connections.

Do any of you techies have any ideas? Have you seen this before?

Thanks in advance!
Kyle

[Howard Gorin]

Talk to Tony Bada at Topcon 1 866 922 6278 or Mark Forman at Long Island Ophthalmic Service

[Kyle]

To close this out, we finally determined (no thanks to Topcon OR Lombart) the USB port on the camera not to be defective but that the firmware had somehow been corrupted, preventing the camera from recognizing the relay as a valid lens.

Ironically, the new loaner camera we received induced the same error message when we first installed it. Thankfully, the camera simply had not been fully initialized.

Problem "solved".

Thanks for the help.