Perkin-Elmer HPLC Problems

[moonman00]

Hi.

I work in a lab that does quality test to drugs.
We have 8 HPLC systems all of them Perkin Elmer, with TotalChrom software v 6.3.1.

Unfortunately, we have had an enourmous amount of problems with this equipments, the main problem being that the HPLCs loose comunication with Totalchrom, resulting in lost data, lost time and money.

the configuration is as follows:

Three computers Pentium core 2 duo, 512 RAM
Total Chrom Workstation V 6.3.1
Windows XP
Dotlink Interfaces(NCI or LINK also)--->Terminal Server---->Switch------>Computer
3 or two equipment for each computer

I would want to know if any of you have had bad experiences with configurations similar to mine, and if you somehow solved it.

He have had several visits from PE, but they say that the problem can relate to an infinite number of variables including: electrical installation, network wiring, switch configuration, computer configuration, Total Chrom configuration, windows configuration, antivirus, network problems...... so and so on... Are these equipment so unreliable?

I will apreciate any comments to this issue.

Regards,

Isaac

[yangz00g]

Our PE200 has encounted similar problems.

My suggestions: 1) boost the memory (RAM) to 2G.
2) disconnect the internet when running

Should work

[randy]

Does TotalChrom still use the Nelson boxes for the A/D conversion? These interfaces would save data from the instrument until the computer could download and process the data.

It is unfortunate that your PerkinElmer representative is unwilling to attempt to solve the problem.

[AdrianF]

I would suggest a maximum of 2 systems per computer; trying to run 3 is asking for trouble!

Experiment with one system linked to one computer - I guess your problems will be over.

[moonman00]

Thank you all for your reply.

We have attempted a lot of things here.

Yes we were told about one computer per instrument, but even one to one fails (with dotlink), So they admitted thay the dotlink firmware has some issues... conecting via serial is not an option because of the limited space we have.

With the interfaces that that randy mentions the problem is reduced but not completely over.

We were told that one computer could handle up to 8 HPLC's with Totalchrom software. But we have 3 computers so we could divide the workload.

A perkin elmer engineer from US came and noticed several details that like Adrian says, were asking for "trouble".

Changes made:

-Add the address of the interfaces to DNS for forward/reverse resolution.
-Set the switch ports to 10 Mbps Half Duplex.
-Conect interfaces via Terminal Server.
-Changed some directories where totalchrom stores data.

Also by recomendation of network expert:

-Removed STP protocol from switch.

Some details

-The computers do not have internet access, but can access the internal network for sharing purposes (printing, files, users, domain, etc).
-The computers are the ones that perkin elmer brought with the HPLC's.

As Adrian advises, we will put an aditional computer to reduce workload.
Yangz00g: we will update the RAM to 2Gb.

We were told that we are one of a few labs to have such amount of HPLC systems in latin america but we are treated like we have none.

Thank you all again for your recomendations.