Chromatography Forum

Se we have a GC attached to a very aging Windows 3.1 system and desperately need to upgrade. We have an extra Windows XP box but what else would we need? An HP-IB card for the PC? Or a new card for the GC?

What about the software? Can we buy a used version of Chemstation or do we have to upgrade with our current license number?

Also, if we could just find some way to integrate on a Windows XP machine, that would be great too. We already have the data backed up but can't read it on anything but the Windows 3.1 machine.

Any help is very appreciated.

We've done a bit of these, so I'll pass on what I know, which is not everything. If you use a Pentium I computer and Windows 95, you should be able to use your existing 82235 HPIB board in it, and use software revision like A.06.03, which was distributed at no charge by Agilent for Y2K. If you update to a Pentium 2, 3, or 4 and Windows 2000, I believe you'll need a 82341 or 82350 GPIB board to fit your computer, and software revision A.06 or newer (but you might need a newer revision of the software than that to configure the 82341/82350 board, that's what we did, then dummied back to the A.06, on a 1050 HPLC). If you upgrade your software with Agilent, they send you the latest version, but that might not be compatible with your GC firmware either. We don't have any ChemStations in our lab running on XP. So it can get complicated. Agilent has a software compatibility chart somewhere on their online Technical Support, but we run A.06 with Windows 2000 which is not listed as "checked out" and it runs fine, we just get a box to click when opening up a ChemStation.

Thanks for the help!

You can consider also our Clarity software - it supports control of 5890 by serial line, this the HP-IB board for computer is not needed and the current version works on Win 2000, XP and Vista. Please check our website www.dataapex.com for more details and possible limitations.

Ivan Vins
DataApex

ChemStation will run fine on XP, although there are sometimes some configuration issues.

Quite frankly, Agilent will not be able (or willing) to help you. However, there are a number of third-party service providers that have loaded just about every ChemStation version on just about every version of Windows, and they claim they can make almost anything work. Email me and I can give you a contact.

Or, you always have Consumer Products Guy at this forum. He seems to have lots of experience getting things like this to work, and seems to be good at it!

You didn't mention which GC you have, 5890A, 5890 Series II, 6890A, 6890N? Product G1656B will get the latest ChemStation upgrade, and to order requires your license number of proof of purchase of the older software. The 5890A is no longer supported, but the Series II is. Look at the main board in the right side, if it's the entire side of the GC, it's no longer supported, if it's half the side, that's the series II board, and it's supported. Power off the GC, the power it back on, at the end of self test, it will say a Revision number for the firmware. You may need to upgrade the firmware (two IC chips). Check the slots in the computer, if it has ISA slots, order the 82341 GPIB board, but if it's PCI slots, use the 82350 card. The only difference is which connector the board has to plug into the computer.