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:
+61396561243
Fax:
+61396561411
Mobil:
+614122882700
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: +49 3641 64-2018
Fax: +49 3641 64-3144
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. (315) 464-8595
FAX (315) 464-8535
email: [hidden email]
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