Chromatography Forum

This is the first time I am seeing HP 5890 with LAN card ?? He might be using HPIB to USB or LAN cable for connection (Not sure). Lets see when he sends the pictures. interesting !

FUR

My mistake - I meant 6850.

1 Check the IP address on the GC using the game boy.
Is the IP address as assumed? (No discharge etc that has reset the GC settings?)
For example as above: GC IP address: 10.1.1.101
(Also watching the lamps on the PC NIC you should see that the cable and communication is OK.)
2 Check the IP address on the PC NIC used for the GC.
For example as above: PC NIC IP address: 10.1.1.100
Sub net mask etc as given by the manual (The PC and GC IP address must belong to the same series, differing only on the last digits)
3 As described above. Ping from cmd line your PC: Ping 10.1.1.100
Off course you should succed here, if not then something wrong with your NIC setup.
4 As described above. Ping from cmd line your GC: Ping 10.1.1.101
This must succesed otherwise you got a a problem and it is meaningsless to mess with Chemstation until you can ping the GC.
5 If still not working, call a IT guy that can find the fault. Hopefully it is not a hardware failure on the GC.
Hope it helps.

1) Yes, IP address on GC is set to 10.1.1.101. The LED light is green on the GC. There is no corresponding LED light on the PC, but I already confirmed it works by hooking it up to a different network cable.

2) Yes, IP address on the PC NIC is set to 10.1.1.100. The subnet mask on both the PC and GC are both 255.255.255.000. Are they supposed to be the same?

3) Typing Ping 10.1.1.100 on the cmd line gives the message "Destination host unreachable"

4) Typing Pint 10.1.1.101 on the cmd line also gives the message "Destination host unreachable"

5) No IT guy here, I'm on my own!

Yes, subnet mask has to be the same.

It's not ok, that you can't ping the IP of your PC, so there is still a fault in the network settings on the PC itself.

I think screenshots will help very very much.

please type to cmd-line: "cmd"

Then there should be a new window, where you can type the commands without the window disapearing afterwards.

Or open it by hand: C: -> Windows -> system32 -> cmd.exe

Type: "ipconfig /all"

There you can see which network adapter uses which settings.

Take a screenshot and post it here.

I also tried opening the command prompt by hand as in C:--> Windows --> System32 --> cmd.exe (not sure what the difference between this and the ChemStation command promt are). But the results after typing ipconfig/all are identical.

Yes, there are 2 NIC's but neither works. I can try to post some additional photos later of the GC setup and GC IP address if that's helpful.

cmd.exe is the same as the windows start menu command prompt, but the windows start menu command prompt closes himself after the done command.

To the screenshots:

Have you connected a LAN cable to the PC and the other end to the GC or a switch?

On the pics it states that this is not the case.

As soon as you connect two devices the PC should say "limited connection" when the IP settings don't match but a connection is realized.

You can test it with the other network cable. Set the network adapter again to the automatic IP adress and look for the IP your network is giving your PC. When you then get an IP adress you can ping the IP of the PC and see how it should look.

When your PC don't gets a connection to your network too, with the same problems like now, then the problem is the PC itself.

Yes, there's a LAN crossover cable plugged into the back of the PC and going directly into the back of the GC.

I already attempted to test the network by plugging an ethernet cord into the same port in the PC that the GC is plugged into and that worked just fine because I was able to get online.

Then I think you have only a few possibilities left to test:



Test another crossover and LAN cable.


Test another PC, you don't need the Chemstation therefor. Just look, if you can get a network connection. This is just to verify that no weird setting/firewall/whatever is blocking network communication on the "old" PC.
- Test a crossover and a LAN cable


Test using a switch between GC and PC. (LAN cables)
- Your PC should get a connection to the switch, so here you have to use the ping-command to check the connection to the GC


When all this tests fail I would conclude that the GC is the problem, so its settings or the network card itself.

The lan card in the instrument might have defaulted to its default address 168.192.254.11, subnet mask 255.255.255.0.

Ok, I tested putting another crossover cable in place. It had no effect.

I tried hooking up another PC to the GC to see if I could check the ping command to test connectivity. Again, no signal.

So I think at this point I would conclude there's something wrong with the GC. Unless, anyone has any additional suggestions, I think I'm just going to have to rely on a service visit from Agilent.

Hi,
As I can see from the conversation, you are still not able to ping your own PC!
As long you don't succed with that, nothing else will work.

As long as the PC didn't realize a connection you can't ping the PC itself.

The PC should realize always a connection as long as there are two working network devices. Even when there are weird IP settings, the PC should say, that there is a "limited connection".

When one of the two devices did not work, the PC shows the message, that there is no ethernet cable connected. Then you are not able to ping the PC itself.

Therefor, I suggested to test the PC with another network, to see, if the network card of the PC is broken or if it work as it should.

When it works, the problem seems to be the network card of the GC.