Chromatography Forum

Hi,
We are considering purchase of a used LCQ Deca XP Plus which is said to come with Xcalibur software on a PC. The vendor says he has no discs or license and seems a bit vague on the subject. He says he has tested the software/PC with the instrument and it communicates OK but has not tested further.

We have no experience with Thermo licensing. Can anyone tell me whether Thermo use a dongle or how do they do it? Is the software able to communicate but if unlicensed, will not acquire data or is crippled in some way without proper licensing?

Any advice appreciated!

Typically the software is installed on a PC that is provided with the instrument. The software works perfectly fine without a license but if you ever reach out to Thermo for any type of troubleshooting/maintenance/repair, the first thing they will ask you is for your license number. They will not support their equipment if its not properly licensed. There are plenty of third party service companies that will still provide you service without a license.

Have you received quotes for this instrument? I work for a pre-owned dealer and have one in stock if you are interested in obtaining a second quote. Just shoot me an email at jason.betz@mckscientific.com

If you're getting an LC system with it, check you can control the LC as well as the mass spec. If they're giving you a Surveyor LC system, ask how much they're going to pay you for taking this piece of junk off their hands, and look forward to a life of wandering retention times and awful carry-over. The mass spec itself is a lovely model, worked very well, but is incredibly old now. You probably won't get any support with or without a licence number - younger Thermo staff might never have seen one of these.

>>JBetz
Thanks Jason for the info. In what format do you get the license number? Just in a file on the PC or on some paper certificate? What should I ask the dealer for?

>>lmh
I guess the license number is definitely worth having. It has no HPLC system but nice new roughing pumps! Is it the Surveyor MS pump or the autosampler that is the problem?

The autosampler is the worst bit. Surveyor autosamplers had very bad carry-over. Their "No Waste" mode was also very inaccurate (although reasonably precise). Thermo never claimed it was accurate, and it may not be an issue to you. The pumps were tolerable if well maintained; at the slightest sign of neglect, retention-times became unstable. The surveyor PDA detector, however, was a thing of beauty.

I was just about to intervene since my old Franken-LC had a surveyor pda plus detector and i loved this one!

Hello,

I have a problem and maybe someone could help, already have the Xcalibur 2.0 software working with our LXQ + Surveyor MS Pump (2005) , but recently we purchased Surveyor with LC Pump , Surveyor PDA detector and MS detector LCQ Deca XP Plus (2009)
and we don't have the drivers for this set.

If possibly anyone could share the drivers or anything to make working with this device possible then I would be really grateful <3

My e-mail is k.m.plebanek@gmail.com or kontakt@maglab.pl