>Hello All-
>
>We are considering an upgrade of the old Motorola-based CPU on the Varian
>Gemini 200 MHz H/C system in our walk-in lab to enable it to use VNMRX on a
>Sparc 5. The upgrade will (*in principle*) turn our older Gemini into a
>Gemini 2000. Have any of you pursued similar upgrades?
As usual, these lists have provided some useful and informative feedback.
Basically, all responses were positive. There were also quite a few
responses (not shown) from other labs contemplating similar upgrades. The
substantive responses are given below:
>David-
> I installed a Sparc 5/Gem2000 upgrade on a proton/carbon Gemini 200 last
>August. The installation itself was fairly simple and straight forward. I
>had a few problems with the autoshimming, and Varian got me a patch that
>seems to have fixed the problem. They are currently beta testing VnmrX 5.1b
>which will prsumably include this as well as perhaps other gemini patches.
> My main complaint with the upgrade is that the kit we received did nothing
>to replace the old disk drive panel and/or door on the front of the console.
>I removed the hard disk, streaming tape, and controller and had gaping holes
>in the front of the console. I finally purchased a relay rack panel to cover
>it, but given what we paid for the upgrade, I would have expected the
>console appearance to have been cleaned up. I have one of the old, original
>systems, so that Varian couldn't give me a door, since they have changed
>cabinet suppliers.
> One additional thought/comment on making the upgrade. Varian leaves
>the 5-1/4" floppy disk installed in the console, but they do not use it
>for data storage. All data storage is on the Sun. The only purpose for
>the old floppy drive is for diagnostic software, which may or may not
>exist right now. At any rate, I took this drive, turned it around, and
>mounted it in the back of the console. There is an extra drive bay back
>there, intended for a second hard drive. By turning it around to the
>back, it is accessible to the service engineer, not confusing the the
>user for a floppy disk drive (especially since the sun drive is not real
>obvious on the side of the 'pizza box'), and cleans up the appearance of
>the front panel.
> The Glide works and is overall more flexible and user friendly than the
>older menu software could ever hope to be. You will still want to get in
>and customize for your application, however. One size does not fit all,
>your mileage may vary, etc.
>
> Good Luck,
>
>--
>Steve Silber s-silber@tamu.edu
>Department of Chemistry 409-845-1745 (voice)
>Texas A&M University 409-845-4719 (fax)
>College Station, TX 77843-3255
>We have both an upgraded 300 and a new 200 (now both 2000's). Both are now
>essentially Unity consoles, for all intents and purposes. The only
>complaint is that acqproc and the acq program located in the gemini can die
>(similar to what happened with the old gemini anyway). This can be a
>problem on long runs. I've created some simple reboot macros that our users
>access as a button on the main menu. This isn't perfect, but it gets around
>most problems. I think this will eventually be resolved, but I don't think
>Varian thinks it is serious enough to deal with.
>
>With that caveat (do us all a favor, and put a clause in your contract that
>you get your money back if it dies more than once a day....what can they do,
>say that it won't?), it is a substantial improvement over the gemini. 2D,
>plotting, etc are all fast. Data storage is just like the unity, as is
>pulse sequence programming (mostly), etc., etc. It is very much like having
>a new machine.
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>Ron Nieman, Director
>Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility
>Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
>Arizona State University
>Tempe, Arizona 85287-1604
>(602) 965-3613 http://www.asu.edu/clas/chemistry/
>(Chemistry)
>Fax (602) 965-2747 http://asnmr4.la.asu.edu/nmr/ (NMR
>Facility)
>email: nieman@asu.edu http://www.public.asu.edu/~nieman/ (my home)
Thanks again for the help!
Dave
David R. Kinney |All opinions are purely mine.
ARCO Chemical Company |
3801 West Chester Pike |
Newtown Square, PA 19073 USA |
Voice: (610)359-3455 |
Fax: (610)359-5573 |
EMail: cvxdrk@arco.com |