Chromatography Forum

So, I had posted up last week that the autosampler on my HP 5890 was not acting right. I ended up finding a new tower to swap in and all seemed fine. I went to fire it up on friday and the whole unit is having trouble now. When I start a run, the autosampler grabs the vial and makes and injection. However just as the injection is made, the GC seems to stop functioning. The indicator lights go out and chemstation never gets the signal that the run started. The display shows 'download complete', from when the method was loaded but that is it. It does not attempt to retrieve the sample vial or do anything. At this point, everything freezes and I need to reboot the entire system (computer, GC and sampler) to get it to do anything. I have switched computers and rebuilt a method from scratch to eliminate a file corruption. I am leaning towards something in the GC itself failing and the autosampler issues were just the beginning. I have several other units I can pull parts from, but am not sure what would be bad. The self checks all pass. I found a service manual that walks you through troubleshooting but nothing talks about my issue. The only thing that changed/happened after the last time it ran correctly was run out of make up air and went into auto shutdown. However, the tank was replaced and it seems to be using gas. I do have one other unit with an FID that I can swap but if there is something that I can test/replace, I would rather do that than swap due to the pita factor. Thanks!

Hello

I'd recommend create method without autosampler (manual injection) and run method to see if Chemstation starts collecting signal - this will help you identify whether problem is with autosampler or with something else.

Regards

Tomasz Kubowicz

And/or disconnect the autosampler cables and try the manual injection orientation.

So it looks like the autosampler is my problem. I reconfigured the set up, deleting the autosampler completely and ran several manual injections. Everything worked well. We have a new (to us) AS ordered and hopefully will solve our problem permanently....at least until the next part dies. Thanks for the help!

Ok, so new question...the autosampler my boss got is a 6890. I cannot find a way to get this AS to be recognized by chemstation. The original one was a 7673A. The only option I have for autosamplers is the 7673 or other/none and that option seems to be expecting manual input to signal the start of the run. I read about being able to use the 7673 controller with the 6890 AS but I would need to remove the clips on the new cable to make it fit. This is something I don't want to do unless I can be guaranteed that it will work. Is there a setting I am missing? Thanks!

Ok, so new question...the autosampler my boss got is a 6890.

I'll confuse the issue a little, here's our systems:

Our 5890 GC has a 7673 autosampler tower Model 18593B and control box model 18594B

One 6890 GC has a 6890 autosampler tower Model 18593B Enhanced Parameters and control box model G1512A

One 6890 GC has a 6890 autosampler tower Model G1513A and control box model G1512A

One 6890 GC has 7683 autosampler tower and no control box (7683 doesn't need one)

I don't know if your new 6890 autosampler tower will work with your 5890's control box.