Gerber Edge Dongle

[JeridHill]

I just bought a Gerber Edge (I). The Omega software was pretty old and the dongle was for 2.0. I downloaded the software from Gerber, but the computer will not recognize the dongle. I am running it off of an XP Pro box and even updated the driver for the dongle. When it's plugged in, it shows something is plugged in via USB, but it says it doesn't recognize the device.

I've tried it on a Windows 7 computer as well with updated drivers and get the same issue. Can I contact Gerber and get a new dongle or does anyone else have any ideas on how I could get this dongle to read?

 

[Mosh]

Geber=OLD TECH!!! Sorry for the KillJoy! I started with Gerber stuff in 1988,
back them it was the game, to me now a days they are out of the loup! Sorry Gerber peeps! I know the edge has it's place, with low volume "sticker" guys...

 

[Fred Weiss]

I think you would be best off to either contact Gerber or one of their distributors ... a distributor being my recommendation.

A few points to consider.

• Omega 2 needs to be installed from the Gerber supplied CDs and using the Gerber supplied password that is printed on a card that comes with the CDs. I don't think you can download it anywhere. The only downloads I know of are maintenance updates etc. and are not complete copies of the entire program.
• The Rainbow Sentinel driver is installed from the CDs. Downloading the latest driver will not work with a dongle setup for Omega 2..
• Omega 2 will not run on Windows 7. The latest version of Windows it will work with is Win XP SP3.
• Installing the Sentinel driver with the dongle plugged in can result in wiping out the dongle.

 

[JeridHill]

We have a VersaCamm VS300, so I understand Gerber is old tech, but I wanted it to do low volume stickers. I was using a material that the EcoSol inks were to adhering to, so I wanted to go the route of an Edge. Any ideas?

 

[Mosh]

if you have a Roland, what is the problem? print/lam/cut we do it 80 hours a week!!!
even doing the lam is faster than the edge any day. unless it is like 5 decals...

 

[JeridHill]

Thanks Fred for the reply.

Omega 2 needs to be installed from the Gerber supplied CDs and using the Gerber supplied password that is printed on a card that comes with the CDs. I don't think you can download it anywhere. The only downloads I know of are maintenance updates etc. and are not complete copies of the entire program.

I had 2.5 installed on the computer that came with it. I uninstalled it and downloaded the 2.1 from Gerber's site. Since it was an update, I already had Gerber components installed from 2.5, so the update worked and I'm running 2.1 currently, but only in demo mode.

The Rainbow Sentinel driver is installed from the CDs. Downloading the latest driver will not work with a dongle setup for Omega 2..

I installed the Consolidated update from Gerber that included the Sentinel driver, so I'm sure it's the correct one. I also installed the updated drivers to see, but it didn't do any good. I uninstalled the new and reinstalled the ones off of Gerber's site.

Omega 2 will not run on Windows 7. The latest version of Windows it will work with is Win XP SP3.

Yeah I know, that's why I was using the XP box. I wanted to see if I could read the dongle on the Windows 7 box, then create a key with a dongle emulator. I would then have used that on the XP box, but again, it wasn't recognizing the USB hardware.

Installing the Sentinel driver with the dongle plugged in can result in wiping out the dongle.

Thankfully it warns you on the installer. So when the installer loaded, I made sure I removed the USB dongle if it was in place.

Thanks again for the help, I'm just lost on what to do other than buy an updated Omega package. I sold my screen shop when I moved to Florida. I got rid of most of my sign equipment as well and only wanted to service a few customers, so it's for low run labels only. I don't feel I need expensive software for the limited use I have with the Edge.

 

[JeridHill]

if you have a Roland, what is the problem? print/lam/cut we do it 80 hours a week!!!

I mentioned it already, the material I need to use, the EcoSol inks are not adhering to. I ended up laminated the material then printing on the laminate. it was backwards and not really what I wanted to do, but I was in a bind and needed to get the decals out right away. I want to use the edge for certain materials like this, plus it's much faster for labels than the Roland, or at least the volumes I'm doing. I may only do 100 labels at a time, but they are small labels. I do use the Roland, but again, some materials I use are not compatible.

 

[JeridHill]

And before it gets into a war on the Roland is better than the Edge etc., the reason I say it's faster is some of the decals I do have small text and I print at the highest resolution in Uni-Direction mode. This way I get a crisper image. I know the Edge is more pixelated on small text, but it's still legible. When printing bi-directional and at lower resolutions, the small text can get grainy and sometimes blurry.

 

[Fred Weiss]

Tony Teveris will hopefully weigh in at some point here. He's the guy that writes Omega and can tell you exactly what is going on.

My educated guess is that it will go back to your installing the 2.1 update on top of an installed copy of Omega 2.5. I'm frankly surprised that it would even do it since 2.5 is a later version than 2.1. The dongle is looking for the last version that it recognized and you changed that when you changed to an earlier version and a different driver. The evidence of that is that you are only able to run in Demo mode which is how Omega tells you that it isn't able to find a valid dongle that matches the version of Omega trying to find it.. If you have the 2.5 disks, I would recommend that you try a reinstall of that and then, if that works, install the version 2.6 update.

 

[JeridHill]

The computer had 2.5 installed and it only ran in Demo mode. I thought maybe the guy gave me the wrong computer, but he assured me it was the right one. So I uninstalled it, then reinstalled. It won't let you install over the newer version, that's why I uninstalled first. The computer doesn't recognize the dongle as a valid device, so I don't think it has anything to do with the software. If it's 2.5, I can download it again from Gerber's site, they pointed me to the 2.1 version as well. I do know the 2.5 & 2.6 versions are there, but I just figured I needed the older version due to the dongle being 2.0. Gerber tech support told me the dongle would work with 2.1. I'm thinking the dongle might be bad since the computer, no matter what I do, doesn't seem to want to recognize it.

As a side note, even if no software was installed, the computer would still recognize the USB device as valid as long as I had the right drivers. It just states it's an unrecognized USB device, so at least I know it's seeing something there.

 

[Fred Weiss]

If you read the descriptions closely on the GSP site, none of them are full running versions of the Omega program. They are updates only and require you to have a correctly installed version (from CDs) on your computer. Therefore, you need to install either version 2.0 or version 2.5 from Gerber supplied CDs which will include a password to allow the full, complete installation.

So anything you downloaded will not be complete.

Do you have the Omega CDs? They are serial matched to each dongle. If you have them and you have the password, then you need to install that core version ... either version 2 or version 2.5. I've done upgrades to my two seats of Omega all the way back from Graphix Advantage 6, GA 6.2, Omega 1, Omega 1.5, Omega 2, Omega 3, and the current version 5. Each of these full upgrades required a GSP supplied CD, a password and a dongle that matched the serial number of each CD.

When you first plugged in the dongle and it wasn't recognized, that was when you should have tracked down why it wasn't being recognized. Once you did the uninstall, you were back to square one and needed to have the installation CDs and the password. The dongle most likely wasn't being recognized because of the configuration of the Rainbow Sentinel Driver.