Finnigan 9001 GC and SS420 A-D converter

[Senior Dave]

Does anyone have any experience using Labquest software, a Finnigan 9001 GC, and the SS420 board? The technology is about 15 years old. I just inherited the system. The computer was running Windows 95. It just crashed and will not start. I removed the board and placed it in a computer running Windows 98, installed the Labquest software and the software key, but the computer does not recognize that the board has been installed and when the software is opened, it is in demo mode. Does anyone know how to get the software out of demo mode and how to get the computer to recognize the SS420 board?
Dave

[jwmol]

The SS420 is an ISA board. You will have to set the I/O address and Interrupt using the DIP-switches on the board in order to avoid conflicts with other devices in your PC and then configure the software accordingly.

When the software runs in demo mode it means it cannot see the key that is connected to the printer port. This means you cannot read result files (except the example chromatograms) and cannot acquire new data.

Depending on the version/age of the software there may be things you need to do. Later versions of the software did not support the key anymore and the license was transferred to a file on the harddisk. If this is the case your license was lost when the hard disk crashed.

It is very difficult to help you without knowning more details of the version. LabQuest basically is a derivative of the EZChrom software.

Jan Willem Mol
Applied Instruments

[Senior Dave]

After several hours of trial and error, we got the computer working. For some reason the software key did not like the printer port on the SS420 board. We installed it in the computer's printer port and it worked. After that it was a lot of software and hardware configuration. The interupts were set wrong and the base address needed to be changed. Thanks for your help.
Dave
Isotec

[jwmol]

Hi Dave,

The 25 pin port on the SS420 is not a "printer port" but a connector to the TP-420 which is a terminal panel. I believe de 25 pin port carries the analog detector input signals.



I hope that hooking up the key to the analog inputs did not break anything. I think the risk is pretty small.

JW
Applied Instruments

[Senior Dave]

Everything seems to working fine. The printer was connected to the key and the key was connected to the SS420 board on the old computer that crashed. The newer computer did not like that configuration for some reason. It is working, but I still need to load a sequence before I can start running samples. I have been running blanks and they are starting to look very nice. Again, thanks for your help. It gave us bump in the right direction.

Dave
Isotec