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I would greatly appreciate any recommendations regarding file archiving
devices (MO, bernoulli, other) compatible with an HP consort 32. I spoke with
a BD rep who informed me that in order to do data analysis on a MAC we would
need to purchase the "FACSNet" application bundle (>$1200) as well as HP file
exchange. Then we could easily find an affordable MAC compatible storage
device such as Iomega's Zip or Jazz drive.
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Both Bernoulli and Optical Disk drives for the CONSORT 32 are available from
Bering (see recent ads in Cytometry) however they are more expensive and
certainly slower than the various SCSI devices available for Macintosh
systems.
Transfer of data from an HP CONSORT 32 to a Mac does indeed require both
FACSNet for C32 and a TCP/IP protocol for the Mac (FACSNet for Mac or
equivalent) as well as FACS Convert software (FCS 1.0 to FCS 2.0 conversion).
This set-up allows the downloading of large numbers of data files but it is
not particularly fast - I recently completed the downloading of approx 200Mb
from C32 to Quadra 650 and found it took about 5 hours.
Diskette transfer is a less costly route requiring CONSORT File Exchange -
CFE (lets Mac read HP diskettes formatted with option 2) and FACS Convert
software - FC (FCS 1.0 to FCS 2.0 conversion). I was wary of this route at
first having experienced speed problems with other conversion routines in the
past. Rather surprisingly I have found that CFE allows the Mac to copy HP
diskette files to its hard disk approximately twice as quickly as the HP
itself can. FC then converts the file header in approximately 10 / 14 seconds
per file. Once in FCS 2.0 they can be archived onto MO disk or Zip as
required. Be aware that once in FCS 2.0 format the files cannot be returned
to FCS 1.0 for analysis on the HP - so you would need a list mode analysis
software on the Mac (such as CELLQuest) unless you have LYSYS II v 2.0 on
your HP which can read FCS 2.0 data.
David Farrell
BDIS - UK
Cowley
Oxford
OX4 3LY
Tel: (44) 1865 748844
Fax: (44) 1865 781557
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