by
LALman » Thu Oct 12, 2017 8:24 pm
lespaul wrote:
Hi everyone,
I have two 5890 units, one is a FID unit while the other is a coupled 5972 MSD (2 separate systems). The FID unit is running ver. B of Chemstation (CS) while the other is A ver. MSD.
My question is, is there any benefit to using a "newer" version of CS, namely a D or E ver.? I know these versions are NOT compatible with 5890 units. But are there better data analysis features on these newer versions, is a upgrade worth it? The cost is quite minimal from our vendor.
The newer software will be installed on a separate, newer workstation, the GC systems will be controlled as they are now (ie. with older software). Just wondering if taking the data files off the old CS (after a run) and opening it in the newer CS (again, on a separate workstation) would be of any benefit to me.
I have the same situation only my MSD is a 5971. I networked mine and simply copy the data directories to a faster PC and d.02 chemstation for calibration, QEDITing, and processing; and from there up to the front office for final reporting. The excel file generated in the data directory by updating to database is perfectly readably by Excel 2003 or higher. But don't try to edit them in newer versions of office and save back to the Win95 machines.
I am running the d.02 version of chemstation on my two 6890 machines. I have checked around and there is no later of chemstation that can control the 5890 generation of instruments. Also, you cannot edit methods with d.02 and expect them to work on A or B versions of chemstation. On the other hand, you can import the A or B versions into d.02 and use them there. I set my methods up in version A/B for acquisition, etc. then I dump all the data from my 5890 FID and 5890/5971 to my d.02 chemstation PC and process them with that imported method. It makes processing the data much faster to do it on a faster XP machine.
Your platform choices are limited. The HPIB boards require ISA bus and only have Win95 drivers. The only thing I can suggest you do to make the win95 PC's a little better is that you can buy ATA to SATA adapter cards for ~$10-15 and fool your Win95 into running on SSD SATA drives and a SATA DVD. I got several 32GB SSD's made by ADATA, and imaged the original ATA hardrives to the SSDs' with PQMagic (~$20 used on Amazon). So, now I have 32 GB of storage (which is all Win95 can manage) and greater reliability.