As stated here before, the choice of tests depends heavily on the
types of experiments to be run on the instrument. For protein work, you
better test water suppression. A sample of 1 mM phenylalanine in 90% H2O is
good for this purpose ( alot of vendor application people use something
like this).
Varian also has a set of macros called Autotest that really
put the instrument through its paces and generate a lot of (mostly) useful
specs on amplifiers, probe, gradients, waveform generators, etc. It takes
about 45 minutes, and we run it quarterly on our instrument to allow
us to track instrument performance. Other vendors probably have something
similar or could be persuaded to duplicate the tests on their instruments to
give a standardized set of tests.
Barry
-- Barry Schweitzer, Ph.D. Director Division of Molecular & Structural Biology Walt Disney Memorial Cancer Institute at Florida Hospital 12722 Research Parkway Orlando, FL 32826 Phone: (407) 380-9977 FAX: (407) 380-9978 email: barry@sneezy.fhis.net