Chromatography Forum

Hi Everyone,
I'm considering buying a used varian HPLC system, but for my purposes will need a PDA detector. The prostar 330 looks like it will fit my needs. The 330 needs a contact closure start signal which it gets from the 210 LC pump, but the manuals I have are not useful as to how this is accomplished. The contact closure signal requires a special cable that Varian used to sell, P/N 03-935716-01, but no longer does. I cannot find it in the Agilent catalog nor can I find any information about how it was wired. Does anyone have one of these cables? Could anyone provide a wiring diagram for that cable? Which pins of the RJ45 connector on the 330 PDA need to connect to the contact closure on the LC pump?

Since it's a contact closure, the PDA's RJ45 output must have one pin set to high (5v?), and one pin that, on contact closure, senses that positive voltage, right? If I were to test the voltage on each pin could I find the active pin? If that works, does anyone have any ideas on how I can find the sensing pin, other than just apply +5V to each one sequentially?

Any help is greatly appreciated. A service manual, if available, would be incredibly helpful as well.

Thanks!

Hi mate,

Here's a few shots of the back of our 210 pump and what the plug looks like. I'm not that confident that I've identified the correct pins tho. The trigger is a paired dark green/white combo. Alas we don't have a multimeter in the lab.

We run the Prostar 330 and 240 pump, both of which are interfaced with separate GPIB cards. The 210 is a backup for when the 240 fails. I'm explaining this as I then have to ensure the 210 can trigger the 330 via the CIM setting for the pump (ie. a start pulse for contact 1). I wrote a "guide" for the lab on how to do this and am happy to share if you want (it made sense at the time, not sure about now tho. ha ha)