Chromatography Forum

Hello all! Here is the situation. I've got a PL-ELS 2100Ice detection system from about 2007, with absolutely none of the original cables or software CDs as it looks like they've all been accidentally thrown away.

This detector has 1 serial output (RS232) and one analogue output. Now the manual for the detector tells me that the RS232 serial outlet will send data back to my acquisition system but that's not the case! I'm using OpenLab ChemStation with an Agilent 1260. Interestingly, even though Chemstation says the detector is offline, I can send instructions to the ELSD and do things like change its temperature and turn it on/off, change the gas flow etc from the 'Instrument Method' screen in chemstation. So there obviously is some communication there, but it's only going one way - I can't get any signal back.

So, it looks like the manual is wrong. The RS232 does not send data, it only transmits instructions, and the readout comes from the 1V analogue output. I read somewhere I need an analogue to digital converter, so I hooked up the analogue output to a Perkin Elmer Nelson 900 box and I would hope that's converted the analogue signal to digital RS232 for me, but do I now I need to convert that signal to a LAN cable so that it can communicate with chemstation? Has anyone out there successfully managed to hook up an old analogue output ELSD to a new CDS??

Any help much much appreciated

Couldn't you use an Agilent A-D Converter box? When I was working, these were #35900E.

Thanks for the response. I had thought of that, but they are a bit out of financial reach for me, even second hand. On the other hand my department is falling down with spare Nelson 900 boxes so I'm hoping I can do some re-jigging with that and then convert that output to a format that the HPLC can understand. Might get a bit of latency on the output with all these different signal conversions but it's better than nothing.

Do you think maybe Agilent chemstation no longer supports this type of old instrument? I thought maybe it was just that I haven't installed the right device drivers, but it looks like the drivers are bundled in with Chemstation. Maybe switching to a different software would help. I know for sure this instrument was designed to work with Galaxie for example.

I think you have driver issue. On add remove programs (or somewhere inside of Openlab control panel, check that you have ELSD driver installed. PL-2100 looks the same as Agilent 1200/1260 ELSD and it is produced by same company ex-Varian, more ex-Polimer Labs now Agilent. If you can not get driver I would try to install Agilent firmware on it and get Chemstation to recognize it as 1200/1260 model.

On my 1200 ELSD there is only F/M RS-232 cable connected to PC and remote start (trigger) to sampler if that helps.

See if you can upgrade to OpenLab EZChrom that supports the PENelson 9** interfaces on serial and IEEE.

I'm pretty sure that there's a null-modem and 25-pin to RJ45 converter that goes between the 900 and the LAN cable. I'd focus my efforts on PE people. T*C is still out there...