Chromatography Forum

I am attempting to resurrect an old 5890 Series II gas chromatograph coupled to a 5970B MSD (small university budget). I have a Windows 95 computer with an 82335 HPIB card and MSD chemstation A.03.00 software. All appears well with the GC. It communicates and can control temperatures, pressures, etc. I am having a problem with the MSD. It does not communicate with chemstation. I get a warning that "The mass spectrometer interface card is not active". I have checked the address and it is the same in the software as on the I/O card. At first I was only turning the pump on and not the heater, but after searching this site, I realized that the heater button also controlled the electronics. However, I am still not sure that the electronics are coming on, the button lights up, but I have no other indications that it is on.

I have five other MSD units in various conditions, so I have a plethora of spare parts, but I am not sure where to begin. Is there a vacuum switch on the electronics or should they be on when the button is lit? The vacuum is only about 9 x 10-5 torr. Is there an easy way to tell if the electronics are powered up? I really don't want to have tear it all the way down, but I suppose I may have to. I am just hoping that someone has an ingenious suggestion. Please let me know if you have any ideas.

Thanks
Chris McGrath
Idaho State University

It's been years since I ran this system but, have you checked the baud settings for the 5970 and 5890. As I recall the MS HPIB had to be daisy chained from the GC.
You can call Alpha Omega as they dealt with these older systems way beyond Agilent's time frames. They are very helpful.

The HPIB cable can run to either the GC or MS first, but whichever is in the middle will have one stacked to chain to the last one.

I wish someone hadn't thrown out my good 5970 manual I was hording for a long time, makes it more difficult to remember all the tricks I learned. In the chemstation software under the Vacuum and tune control screed there is a menu item to Initialize the MS interface, you may need to use that to activate the interface if you have not already done so. There should also be a menu item to check the status of the MS in that window.

For the 5970 to work with the Windows version of Chemstation you need the HPIB connected to the SmartCard interface, not sure if it has to be a SmartCard III or not, but the one for the HPUX(RTE-A) or Pascal chemstation doesn't work with the Windows version. The same card was used in the 5971, and I believe it just had an adapter slot that attached to it to make it fit in the 5970.

I am pretty sure that I have a smartcard II for a 5970B. You very well may have one in one of your parts units. Looks for the card that has RAM sticks installed on it, that is how you can tell it is a smartcard II which you will need for G1701AA windows 95

I do have a Smartcard II installed and I have tried one of the spares I have lying around with no difference. When I attempt to intialize the MS using the software (under the vacuum and tune control) it just flags the interface is not active error. One thing that has been suggested is daisy chaining the HPIB cable. This isn't the same as what is in the 5890 - Common Cabling \ Pin-outs document, but it is an easy thing to check. I am still skeptical that I am even getting power to the electronics. It looks like I am going to have to find a way to check this.

I do have a Smartcard II installed and I have tried one of the spares I have lying around with no difference. When I attempt to intialize the MS using the software (under the vacuum and tune control) it just flags the interface is not active error. One thing that has been suggested is daisy chaining the HPIB cable. This isn't the same as what is in the 5890 - Common Cabling \ Pin-outs document, but it is an easy thing to check. I am still skeptical that I am even getting power to the electronics. It looks like I am going to have to find a way to check this.

Most of those cards in the 5970 will have voltage test points on them. Usually they were what looked like a pin with a round hole at the tip, and on the board they will be labeled +5v, -5v, +12v, -12v and such. If there isn't a pin there then you will at least see a solder spot to touch with a volt meter which has the same labels beside it.

For the connection, have you tried hooking up just the HPIB cable from the PC to the MS and see if that works without the GC?

As I recall Chemstation does not have full functionality when using a 70. Not all the functions work on the tune page.

So, i switched out the relay that controls the power for the electronics and it is now turning the power to the electronics on. Now I have to work on improving the vacuum and figure out how to run it, but thanks for all the help so far.

Thanks
Chris

Ok, I got the 5970 working, for the most part, but there is some pretty significant noise between 400 and 600 amu. It looks like two humps on the large scale, but, zoomed in, it is made up of individual lines. It reminds me of ringing from a ground loop. Everything is plugged into the same circuit and I have tried two sets of boards and two different analyzers. There were minor differences, but the interference remained. Does anyone have any ideas?


Edit: I forgot to mention that the "humps" only occur with the calibration valve open.
Thanks
Chris

You only get the humps with the cal standard, but do the individual lines appear when the cal standard is off?

If it doesn't look like PFTBA:

http://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?I ... 7&Mask=200

then perhaps your cal standard is contaminated.

Any chance it's vacuum pump oil that you're seeing?