From: Eric Martz (emartz@microbio.umass.edu)
Date: Thu Mar 03 1994 - 15:55:53 EST
In message Thu, 24 Feb 1994 07:37:00 -0500 (EST), "BIC MR. MARK A. MOORMAN" <MOORMAN@usuhsb.usuhs.mil> writes: > Several of my colleagues are exceedingly interested in acquiring a > Consort 30 rig for use as a data analysis workstation. Does such a thing > still exist? In working condition? Does anybody know of another (not > too expensive) platform that will run FACScan Research Software v2.1 > (3/89)? Before you go that route, I suggest that you take a look at some of the freeware which has recently become available. I can't imagine why anyone would want to run FACScan Research Software 2.1 (FRS) on an HP when Joe Trotter's excellent program WinMDI is available free (by anonymous ftp from flosun.salk.edu in /pub/pc). My impression is that WinMDI will do everything FRS 2.1 will do, but MUCH better, and a lot more as well (e.g. 3D color dot plots and 3D histograms). Moreover, it works under windows on PC's and, being free, you can copy it to as many PC's as you wish. This decentralizes data analysis and avoids depending on a single obsolescent and overpriced piece of hardware. For certain kinds of analysis where the desired results are scatter-gated corrected fluorescence intensities, especially by batch from large numbers of files, or time slicing, my program MFI may be a useful adjunct to WinMDI. MFI is available free from flowcyt.bio.umass.edu in /pub/flowcyt/mfi. Included is an extensive tutorial with sample data files. MFI runs only on PC's but does not require Windows. I wrote MFI because of the limitations of FRS for my purposes! Both WinMDI and MFI work on FCS 1.0/2.0 files from BD and Coulter instruments. Both are "unsupported" (in the sense that commercial software is "supported") but if they do what you need, that doesn't matter. Also highly deserving of consideration is Robb Habbersett's IDLYK, a super-duper flow analysis program in the public domain available from robb@beatrice.lanl.gov (Los Alamos). I had the pleasure of a demonstration from Robb earlier this week! This is the only free program I know of which will do DNA analysis (as well as everything else). The catch with IDLYK is that it requires an interpreter called IDL to run. A single CPU license for IDL costs about $1,500 for a PC and >= $3,000 for a Sun/unix system. This is still a bargain compared to commercial software. It is especially a bargain if you're considering doing any programming of software for flow data file analysis -- Robb convinced me that the IDL language is the way to go. /*- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Eric Martz, Professor of Immunology emartz@microbio.umass.edu Dept Microbiology Voice: 413-545-2325 FAX: 413-545-1578 Morrill IVN 203, Box 35720, Univ Massachusetts, Amherst MA 01003-5720 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -*/
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