I am working
on upgrading the computers attached to three cytometers, a FACScan,
FACSCalibur and a FACSVantage. The computers were two 7300 and a 7600
running CellQuest 3.0 with MacOS 8.6. The new computers are G4
Quicksilvers, with MacOS 9.2.2 and CellQuest 3.3. The upgrade for the
FACScan went fine. The computer communicates with the cytometer and the
CellQuest software works great. Maybe once a week we see a glitch where
the
cytometer and the computer won't talk, restarting both solves the problem.
The upgrade for the FACSCalibur has been problematic. I keep running
into issues with the cytometer and the computer talking to each other.
Sometimes it takes six restarts before they talk. Many times if I check
the
BDPAC Control panel it will state either Waiting for Acknowledgement or
Incorrect BDINTs present. I have 4 of these new G4s. I have put three
different ones in place on the FACSCalibur and all have similar problems.
I
have not upgraded the Vantage because of the issues I am seeing with the
new
Macs. I have two of the G4s set up for stand alone work and CellQuest is
running well on them.
My questions are:
1. Has anyone had similar problems when using one of the new G4 macs?
(These Macs have the ATI Radeon 7500 card in them so I have not been able
to
downgrade the version of the Macintosh OS. I spent some time trying but
did
not pursue it because it seems CellQuest runs fine on other systems.)
2. I set up the FACSCalibur with the 7600 that it came with, it seems to
exhibit the same problems but with less frequency. Are there different
BDPAC cards or whatever the PCI card that goes in the Macintosh is call?
I
can not distinguish a difference between the one in the FACScan and the
FACSCalibur.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Robert Sealey
Bioinformatics Technician
Veterinary Molecular Biology
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jan 05 2003 - 19:26:09 EST