Computer for Bio-Rad MRC1024

[George Ring]

Hello, All,

 

I'm afraid I already know the answer to my question, but...hope against hope - has anyone succeeded in upgrading his/her computer driving an MRC-1024 to something better than a Dell PowerEdge 2300??

 

Thanks for any suggestions,

 

George

 

 

George Ring, Ph.D.
Dept. of Cell and Developmental Biology
SUNY Upstate Medical University
750 E. Adams St.
Syracuse NY  13210
Tel. [phone]
FAX [phone]
email: [hidden email]

[Craig Brideau]

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What sort of hardware and software are in the machine?  If it's all PCI cards then you can probably swap it out if the software isn't programmed to be too specific.
We've had really good luck upgrading our Nikon scope.  We have an old C1 that we upgraded to a current model Dell workstation with surprisingly little difficulty.
Of course now that I've said that it may explode, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.  @:-)

Craig

On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 7:48 AM, George Ring <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hello, All,

 

I'm afraid I already know the answer to my question, but...hope against hope - has anyone succeeded in upgrading his/her computer driving an MRC-1024 to something better than a Dell PowerEdge 2300??

 

Thanks for any suggestions,

 

George

 

 

George Ring, Ph.D.
Dept. of Cell and Developmental Biology
SUNY Upstate Medical University
750 E. Adams St.
Syracuse NY  13210
Tel. [phone]
FAX [phone]
email: [hidden email]

[Torsten.Fregin]

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>We
> have an old C1 that we upgraded to a current model Dell workstation
> with surprisingly little difficulty.

Hi!

How about an old Leica TCS NT? I was told Leica sold new computers for some time
(around 1999?), but when I asked them about an upgrade two years ago they just tried to sell
me a new confocal...

;-) Torsten

[Csúcs Gábor]

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Hello Torsten,

As far as I know those computers can be upgraded. It can be done only by
Leica and will cost you around 10.000 EUR for a "no name" computer, but
can be done...

Cheers   Gabor

[Christian-103]

Search the CONFOCAL archive at http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal The specific cards are set up differently (jumper placement) between the OS/2 Warp and the Windows OS (NT4.0 or W2000, I don't recall).  Which are you running? 

I will also point out that "better" is sort of subjective.  "Faster" can cause problems if the computer moves too fast for the hardware after all.   The biggest problem we ever had was getting the files off the OS/2, but that was taken care of via networking.  If I was still running an OS/2, I'd just network it to a dedicated server, not that I suspect there are any viruses that can jump from Windows XP or Vista to OS/2 any more.

I miss my ol' 1024.

[Nowell, Cameron]

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Hi George,

                 This topic came up a while ago when i was asking about upgrading an NT machine to windows XP. I received a reply from Chris Power from Zeiss. It doesn’t seem to be in the archive anymore so here is the reply he gave.

 

Cheers

 

 

Cam

Cameron J Nowell B. Sc. (Hons)

Microscopy Research and Imaging Core Facility

Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre

12 St Andrews Place

East Mebourne, 3002

Victoria, Australia

 

Phone: [phone]

Fax:       [phone]

Mobil:  [phone]

 

Dear Sirs,

Following your questions I thought that I would add a few insights to the issues regarding LaserSharp2000 from a former Bio-Rad perspective.
The easiest site for information should be:

http://www.zeiss.de/lasersharp2000

From here you can download a PDF with a table on page 2 showing the systems supported and under which version of LaserSharp2000. The crude summary is that MRC-1024 systems support stopped at V5.2 but the radiance support continued to V6.
Operating systems were also in the table, although these have not been updated for WindowsXP. Again the summary here is that if you have an MRC-1024 you will have to stick to WindowsNT, if you have a Radiance you can use 2000 or XP (I have not had time to test Vista yet). The reason for this is the control board for the MRC-1024, which is called the SCAN/VIS board pair as there are two boards, 1 to control the scanning and 1 to collect the signal. In older systems these are ISA boards. The ISA boards can run under OS/2 or WindowsNT. There is also a newer PCI version of this board pair that only runs under NT. This board was a proprietary board designed for the MRC-1024 and the driver was specifically written for WindowsNT. We (Bio-Rad Microscience) investigated if we could get this driver re-written for Windows2000 or XP and even spent a few months trying but it turned out to be much harder than expected so the project was abandoned. It is for this reason that the MRC-1024’s will never go beyond WindowsNT.

On the PC side the PCI SCAN, VIS board pair is a reasonable ‘fussy’ card. By fussy I mean that we did find trouble getting it to run in many computers despite it being in theory a generic PCI architecture. For this reason I would recommend that you either get a PC from support or at least try to match the model as closely as you can (from memory these were the Dell 1300, 1400 and perhaps 1600 SC Poweredge servers). The older ISA SCAN/VIS board pairs were extremely fussy. I tested over 20 different motherboards and the only computer that I could ever get the board to run on was the Poweredge 2300. If you still have an old ISA board pair this really is the only PC you can use. I just looked on ebay and there are not many but you can pick them up for next to nothing. If you do buy them from ebay do not buy the dual processor versions as LaserSharp2000 has problems running on dual processor machines. I have tried virtual machines like VMware for both the ISA and PCI systems but with no luck when trying to talk to this board.

So in summary, if you have an MRC-1024 the best you can ever hope for is a Dell Poweredge2300 running at 550 or perhaps 600Mhz PII processor, 1, perhaps 2Gb of ram, running under WindowsNT with LaserSharp2000 V5.2

The Radiance systems switched to various firewire boards (again explained in the pdf) which are much less fussy and easier to run as they were not entirely proprietary, although you had to have exactly the model we specified for it to work. We hope to release a service pack with some minor bug fixes for the Radiance in the next few months.

With respect to the software generations the 4 generations were:
1 = SOM
2 = Comos
3 = LaserSharp (for OS2) This had a release V1 to release V3.2
4 = LaserSharp2000 This had a release V1 to a release V6

With respect to the files you need to backup on windows systems they are:
C:\lasersharpNT\Database\lsmessages.mdb
C:\lasersharpNT\configuration.txt (Note: That in Version 5.1 this file moved from C:\LaserSharpNT\components\Configuration.txt)
C:\lasersharpNT\mcu.ini (If it exists)
C:\LasersharpNT\RealHW.emu if it exists (Radiance only)
C:\LasersharpNT\Lsrsharp.hw (for MRC-1024 systems)
C:\lasersharpNT\MCU.txt and any other MCU files you may have created or modified
C:\lasersharpNT\Scripts folder
C:\lasersharpNT\LUTs folder
C:\lasersharpnt\headsettings.txt
C:\lasersharpnt\detsettings.txt
C:\Flash.log

On OS2 systems I think it is just the lsrsharp.hw and lsrsharp.ini

Best wishes, and the best of luck...
Chris Power
_____________________________________________________

Carl Zeiss MicroImaging GmbH
Advanced Development - Applications

C h r i s P o w e r

Telefon/ Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
mailto: [hidden email]
http://www.zeiss.de/micro

 

 

From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of George Ring
Sent: Wednesday, 10 September 2008 11:48 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Computer for Bio-Rad MRC1024

 

Hello, All,

 

I'm afraid I already know the answer to my question, but...hope against hope - has anyone succeeded in upgrading his/her computer driving an MRC-1024 to something better than a Dell PowerEdge 2300??

 

Thanks for any suggestions,

 

George

 

 

George Ring, Ph.D.
Dept. of Cell and Developmental Biology
SUNY Upstate Medical University
750 E. Adams St.
Syracuse NY  13210
Tel. [phone]
FAX [phone]
email: [hidden email]

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[Sylvie Le Guyader-2]

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Sound familiar...

Med vänlig hälsning / Best regards
 
Sylvie
 
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Sylvie Le Guyader
Dept of Biosciences and Nutrition
Karolinska Institutet
Novum
14157 Huddinge
Sweden
[phone]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]]
> On Behalf Of Torsten Fregin
> Sent: 10 September 2008 18:31
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: Computer for Bio-Rad MRC1024
>
> Search the CONFOCAL archive at
> http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
>
> >We
> > have an old C1 that we upgraded to a current model Dell workstation
> > with surprisingly little difficulty.
>
> Hi!
>
> How about an old Leica TCS NT? I was told Leica sold new computers for

some
> time
> (around 1999?), but when I asked them about an upgrade two years ago they
just
> tried to sell
> me a new confocal...
>
> ;-) Torsten

[Eric Scarfone]

Search the CONFOCAL archive at
http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal

Hey
even if the computer you get has appropriate connections, be sure to
check that the voltage of the power supply matches the requirements of
the Biorad boards.
This is often a probleme when  going from very old to new motherboards.
And there you can rely "fry" the precious old boards!
good luck
Eric

Eric Scarfone, PhD, CNRS,
Center for Hearing and communication Research
Department of Clinical Neuroscience
Karolinska Institutet

Postal Address:
CFH, M1:02
Karolinska Hospital,
SE-171 76 Stockholm, Sweden

Work:  [phone],
Cell:  [phone]
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email:  [hidden email]
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----- Original Message -----
From: George Ring <[hidden email]>
Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 3:48 pm
Subject: Computer for Bio-Rad MRC1024
To: [hidden email]

> Search the CONFOCAL archive at
> http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
>
> Hello, All,
>
> I'm afraid I already know the answer to my question, but...hope
> againsthope - has anyone succeeded in upgrading his/her computer
> driving an
> MRC-1024 to something better than a Dell PowerEdge 2300??
>
> Thanks for any suggestions,
>
> George
>
>
> George Ring, Ph.D.
> Dept. of Cell and Developmental Biology
> SUNY Upstate Medical University
> 750 E. Adams St.
> Syracuse NY  13210
> Tel. [phone]
> FAX [phone]
> email: [hidden email]
>

[George Ring]

Hello, all,

 

Sorry for not giving more detail in my original post.  I am running NT 4.0 SP6 on a Dell PowerEdge 2300 with ISA slots for the Vis and Scan cards.  I have recently been getting the "Blue Screen of Death" rather frequently.  It might be because of a failing monitor(new one on order), a barely compatible hard drive that I installed about a year ago, or the computer could be dying altogether.  Motherboards are still available from Dell for about $600, or I could buy a used 2300 from eBay.  However, all things being equal, if I have to buy something,  I would rather get a newer model that is easier to get parts for.  Hence my question to the list. 

 

Thank you all for your suggestions,

 

George

 

George Ring, Ph.D.
Dept. of Cell and Developmental Biology
SUNY Upstate Medical University
750 E. Adams St.
Syracuse NY  13210
Tel. [phone]
FAX [phone]
email: [hidden email]

>>> "ConfocalService Ltd." <[hidden email]> 9/10/08 3:47:25 PM >>>

Hi George,

 

Could you confirm you are on OS2 ?

I have a suggestion for upgrading to winNT , if this is what you after.

 

best

farhad

confocalservice

 

 

 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: George Ring <[hidden email]>
Date: 2008/9/10
Subject: Computer for Bio-Rad MRC1024
To: [hidden email]

Hello, All,

 

I'm afraid I already know the answer to my question, but...hope against hope - has anyone succeeded in upgrading his/her computer driving an MRC-1024 to something better than a Dell PowerEdge 2300??

 

Thanks for any suggestions,

 

George

 

 

George Ring, Ph.D.
Dept. of Cell and Developmental Biology
SUNY Upstate Medical University
750 E. Adams St.
Syracuse NY  13210
Tel. [phone]
FAX [phone]
email: [hidden email]