A/D box for Chemstations

[Shankar Bhattacharyya]

I have an old HP 1047A refractive index detector, which cannot take an
HPIB card, so I cannot read the signal from it into Chemstation
software. While I intend to solve this problem by getting a Polymer Labs
light scattering detector at some point, that point is some distance
away, since we have been spending lots of money on LC/MS and such. What
do I need to read the output of the 1047A into a Chemstation? I am not
looking for any control of the detector, since there is none to be had
anyway.

We are running both 16 bit and 32 bit LC Chemstations and it would be
sufficient for now if the solution worked on the 16 bit Chemstations.
The build number for each is a couple of years old.

I assume we will have to sort through some firmware version issues and
such.

Of course, we could develop LC/MS solutions and such but that seems a
bit silly.

Thanks for any suggestions.

- Shankar

[Christopher R. Lee]

HP used to have a box with analog and serial inputs and HPIB outputs. I know
because threw one away about 15 years ago.

This provides me with an opportunity to complain that, after 40 years of lab
computing and in these days of GHz bandwidths, there is still no industry
standard for transmitting an ordinary chromatographic signal from one make
of instrument to another make of CDS.

Analog is not suitable, because the dynamic range can be as high as 10e6,
and conversion hardware isn't always immune to the hyperfrequency
transmitters that abound in colleagues' pockets and elsewhere in the
vicinity of the equipment.

Regards

Post by Shankar Bhattacharyya
I have an old HP 1047A refractive index detector, which cannot take an
HPIB card, so I cannot read the signal from it into Chemstation
software. While I intend to solve this problem by getting a Polymer Labs
light scattering detector at some point, that point is some distance
away, since we have been spending lots of money on LC/MS and such. What
do I need to read the output of the 1047A into a Chemstation? I am not
looking for any control of the detector, since there is none to be had
anyway.
We are running both 16 bit and 32 bit LC Chemstations and it would be
sufficient for now if the solution worked on the 16 bit Chemstations.
The build number for each is a couple of years old.
I assume we will have to sort through some firmware version issues and
such.
Of course, we could develop LC/MS solutions and such but that seems a
bit silly.
Thanks for any suggestions.
- Shankar

[Shankar Bhattacharyya]

Post by Christopher R. Lee
HP used to have a box with analog and serial inputs and HPIB
outputs. I know because threw one away about 15 years ago.

I talked to Agilent yesterday. They have a current box which will do
this. It costs about three thousand dollars. It takes analog inputs
and puts out GPIB or CAN cable output and works with both 16 bit and
32 bit Chemstation software. However, I really want an old box I can
afford to regard as disposable. Three thousand dollars is well on the
way to a "new" detector from the used market. They also have a device
which will take GPIB output and feed it into a USB port on a 32 bit
Chemstation.

Post by Christopher R. Lee
This provides me with an opportunity to complain that, after 40
years of lab computing and in these days of GHz bandwidths, there
is still no industry standard for transmitting an ordinary
chromatographic signal from one make of instrument to another make
of CDS.

^^^^ CDS?

Post by Christopher R. Lee
Analog is not suitable, because the dynamic range can be as high as
10e6, and conversion hardware isn't always immune to the
hyperfrequency transmitters that abound in colleagues' pockets and
elsewhere in the vicinity of the equipment.

For chromatographic purposes analog is semi-acceptable, subject to RF
noise issues, since most detectors can be persuaded to put out a
signal with a span of 1 V. We once configured a Waters 401 RI
detector, using its 10mV output, into a Turbochrome system, via the
Perkin-Elmer NCI A/D box's 1V input. It was a somewhat wacko solution
but it worked for the immediate need. We still have the NCI boxes and
the computer from that. So, in principle we could do that with 1047.
That is how it was used when it was being used. However, that is a lot
of work since we no longer have an installed Turbochrome system.

We briefly - for about 30 seconds - considered wireless networking in
the lab, where the network is now too complicated for us to manage
sensibly without IT help but abandoned that notion quickly because we
had no idea what a high RF environment would do to instruments and
their signals.

Post by Christopher R. Lee

Post by Shankar Bhattacharyya
I have an old HP 1047A refractive index detector, which cannot take an
HPIB card, so I cannot read the signal from it into Chemstation
software. While I intend to solve this problem by getting a
Polymer Labs light scattering detector at some point, that point
is some distance away, since we have been spending lots of money
on LC/MS and such. What do I need to read the output of the 1047A
into a Chemstation? I am not looking for any control of the
detector, since there is none to be had anyway.

Our LC operation now includes equipment spanning the range from an HP
1047A RI detector to a Waters Acquity/Premiere LC/MS system, which is
the newest addition to the repertoire. A few months ago we still had
Waters M6000 pumps in use for simple post-column derivatization
operations but I grew tired of being the repair arrangement and dumped
them.

- Shankar