Star*Net v.11
I didn’t plan on upgrading my v.6 copy of Star*Net. I saw no reason to, as it did everything I need it to do. But fate had other plans.
I began installing and configuring a new workstation a couple of days ago. I bought and installed a Siig parallel port card to accommodate my Star*Net dongle, as I’ve always had good results with Siig port cards. However, Star*Net didn’t see the dongle on the new machine. A little nosing around on the Siig website revealed that this card uses a virtual address instead of a legacy address, and so it won’t work with dongles. No problem, I thought, I’ll just move the port card from my old workstation over. But Star*Net still didn’t see the dongle. I tried changing just about every option on the port that I could find, but no go. Well, I thought, I guess I can keep using Star*Net on the old machine while I ponder my options, so I put the old port card back. But Star*Net now didn’t see the dongle on that machine, either. I guess I somehow broke the 30-year-old dongle.
Star*Net is so deeply embedded in my daily workflow that I was dead in the water without it, but the $2k upgrade cost gave me pause, so I spent the next couple of hours considering alternatives.
I have TBC, but I’ve only used it for GPS vector processing and surface modeling. I don’t use a Trimble data collector, and didn’t see any easy option for getting my total station data into TBC. And I don’t know my way around the adjustment options for terrestrial data (centering errors, instrument errors, etc.).
I downloaded a trial copy of Columbus, but pretty quickly got discouraged by the learning curve there, too.
In the end I bit the bullet and bought the Star*Net upgrade. Aside from some changes to the interface there’s not much difference between v.6 and v.11. And so far I’m finding most of the differences annoying, but that’s more a reflection of my calcified habits than a knock on the software itself. But at least I don’t have to worry about the USB dongle lasting 30 years, because I’ll likely be dead by that time.
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