Upgrading OS and HPIB card for a 5890 SeriesII

[agonzal]

Hello,
I currently have two 5890 GCs, one A series and one series II. I run both of them from a single PC with an old HPIB card (ISA slot), Chemstation A.06.03 and win98.
I need to separate the instruments now, so I need an extra HPIB card and a new PC for the Series II.
I am wondering what combination of HPIB card / windows version / Chemstation version should I look for.
Thank you,
Andrés

[KM-USA]

Andrés - I've got 82335, 82341, and 82350 HPIB cards available for computers for a 5890, and very reasonable.

I may be wrong, as I'm not great on computers, but I think that the 82335 only fits in Pentium 1 computers. The 82341 and 82350 HPIB cards fit in Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 (I have no idea about newer). Chemstation A.06.03 was the replacement Y2K software supplied by Agilent/HP. There is an Agilent PDF chart online at http://www.chem.agilent.com/Library/Sup ... a10674.pdf but be aware that this only details what Agilent confirms is compatible, and not all combinations are tested out; for example, Agilent never confirmed Windows 98 as working for anything, but you currently use that combination fine.

The link shows A.06.03 compatible with the three HPIB cards I listed above.

Our last operational 5890 here runs on Windows NT4 and A.06.03. We may have had a 5890 system running Win 2000 and A.06.03 (we sold that).

[aidnai]

Hi agonzal,
I am running a 5890 series II on windows XP with a USB-GPIB converter (it's a 82350B). This is a great setup because you can run it as a virtual machine and you don't have to support decrepit hardware (old dying hardware is what pushed me onto VM).

Chemstation version is B.03.02.

Newer versions of chemstation still support the 5890, even if it isn't advertised. I have a trial version of Chemstation C.01.05 (part of OpenLab CDS) and it works on there just fine. That runs on windows 7 at least.

The 82350B USB-GPIB is about $500 new and requires a little bit more setup, but I recommend it because you aren't chained to old hardware at that point. You do have to have at least a B revision of chemstation I believe, along with Agilent IO library 15 or later if I recall correctly.
Aidan

[gstaepels]

Hi aidnai,

Thank you for your interesting post. We have an Agilent 6890 GC + 5973 MSD, both still is very good condition. Only the computers worries me, since it is 10+ year old, running WindowsXP. The instruments are connected via a HPIB card, and do not have Ethernet connections. Upgrading the instruments is very costly, so a solution using a HPIB-to-USB convertor may well be the solution. Our current version of the MSD Chemstation is B.02.01. Do you have suggestions on configurations etc.. you would like to share?

Many thanks for your help

Gilbert

[aidnai]

Hi Gilbert,
I do not have experience with running the MS on the USB-GPIB converter. What I recommend is searching for documentation that it works.

For the PC end, you can try option A: cloning your harddrive with a tool like disk2vhd from sysinternals and using that as a virtual harddrive with VirtualBox or similar virtualization software. Or Option B: if you have all your installation media, do a fresh install of XP and chemstation within VirtualBox. Either way, this will let you run XP and all your programs (such as chemstation) on top of a more modern OS and hardware. Cloning your harddrive is a good idea anyway if you are concerned about your hardware failing.

To get the USB-HPIB converter working correctly, you would need to attach the USB device to the virtual machine and then configure it with Agilent IO libraries (in the VM).
-GPIB address = 30
-SICL name = hp82341
-No autodiscovery of instruments

Hope that helps!
Aidan

[gstaepels]

adnai,

Thanks for your comments. I transfer the info to our IT guys. I think they will be able to make the things work. I an glad that these solutions exist, because it is a pity to throw away a good working instrument due to computer problems.

Gilbert