Original question from me:
VNMR 6.1B says status is "Acquiring" when it's supposed to be "Idle." After
some acq cage reboots and maybe some Sun reboots, it works again for a few
days. You can't make "Acquiring" go away by trying to abort an acquisition.
You can't go to "Interactive" mode, either.
Thanks to John, Charlie, Jeff, David, Rich, Tim, and Dave for replies. The
most common suspect was the 5V supply in the diff box and they can be had
from Allied for $38, so I will get some anyway.
Some mentioned board incompatibility in the acquisition cage of this
HAL-based system, so let me take the opportunity to provide some
potentially useful information. It is my understanding that Varian will no
longer upgrade a Motorola-based VXR to a Sun/HAL system and I can certainly
understand why. I went through the process and it is necessary that all the
correct revisions of the acquisition control board, the input board, the
STM - and perhaps others - be in place and then even these vary according
to software revision.
It is too much of a nightmare to keep track of and board availability is
likely declining. If there is a need, AMMRL would be the logical place to
look to in cobbling together a database of what works with what. My set of
components works and I would be happy to contribute to the knowledge base.
Oddly, David and Rich both mentioned that they had this sort of behavior
when trying to use the temp-control window of VNMR. My system's misbehavior
correlates with VT experiments and it has not acted up since the last VT
experiment, so I'm guessing there is some software-induced glitch in
host-acq communication that was the source of my problems.
Since I've got to keep my 1987 VXR-300 going, I'll be replacing/rebuilding
DC supplies in its componentry prophylactically. I assume one can focus
mainly on the electrolytic capacitors (lifetime 10 years?) and hope for the
best.
Bill Stevens
P.S. I'm trying to learn about the GPIB because I'm interested in using
spare PTS's as test equipment. Any advice would be appreciated.
William C. Stevens, Ph.D. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility
Director Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL 62901-4405
618-453-6498 voice
618-453-6408 fax wstevens_at_siu.edu
http://opie.nmr.siu.edu
Received on Thu Oct 04 2001 - 11:14:06 MST