Chromatography Forum

5890/5971 GC-MS
Computer (HP Vectra VE Series 3) HDD recently crashed. Reinstalled Chemstation (G1701AA) after retrofitting an old 4GB HDD--Windows 95 OS.

Communication between Chemstation and instrument seemed ok. After a test run I received the following error message:

"Fail i/o failed in file: c:\hpchem\1\methods\CSA1\acq.ms"

Any ideas on what could cause this? How can I resolve this?

I'm thinking that it's a computer (registry, config, etc.) error rather than a Chemstation error. I really don't know...

I was of the understanding that the 5971 MSD was not compatible with Windows 95 or newer; we used Windows 3.x and G1034C Chemstation with our 5890/5971.

It was fine prior to our HDD crash. I'm trying to recall if maybe we installed a chemstation update at some point. We were using Win 3.1 initially. I don't think that's the case though. I have a colleague that was successful using this same version of Chemstation with Win NT--pretty much Win 95 with network capabilities.

Any other ideas?

UPDATE:

We were able to resolve the I/O error. Thanks to our computer guy who was able to retrieve our methods, data, database, and sequence files from our dying HDD and burn these files to CD. Files burnt to CD are Read Only, so when these files were transfered to the new HDD, they were copied over as Read Only files. The I/O error involved ACQ.MS and METHODS.MAC All I did was go into the properties of these files within a method and deselect/uncheck "Read Only" and viola...we have a running 5890/5971 Chemstation-Win95 bench. (note: one should be able to uncheck the read only box from within the properties of an entire folder so you don't have to uncheck each file)

I hope this helps out anyone else that encounters this problem.

I was of the understanding that the 5971 MSD was not compatible with Windows 95 or newer; we used Windows 3.x and G1034C Chemstation with our 5890/5971.

You can use a SmartCard1 5971 MSD with G1034C Chemstation on Windows 95 and 98. I have only used them with a 82335 HPIB card though (actually, a SmartCard2 5972 MSD will work with G1034C Chemstation on Win98 with an 82335... I don't know about an HPIB 5973 tho). I have not gotten G1034C to work with WinNT or Win2k but I have gotten G1034C to work in a Win98 VirtualBox emulator on a WinXP box (tho I have not gotten the VirtualBox to figure out how to communicate with an ISA card using a ISA-to-USB adapter or a GPIB-USB adapter).