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On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 9:18 AM, David Johnston <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

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>
> Dear All,
>
> not directly confocal related but I guess that other folks will be in
> facilities
> with other high end microscopes as well.
>
> We have a fully automated Olympus IX81 time lapse system with prior stage
> and SIS camera running under Cell^P. It behaves beautifully on phase
> contrast
> only and fluorescence only runs, but when we do combined phase and
> fluorescence (MFIP mode) runs, we experience random system crashes at
> different times during the run on about 50% of occasions. This problem has
> been ongoing for about 4 years now and neither Olympus nor I have come up
> with the cause. We have had a loan system and swapped out every
> automated part in turn, rebuilt the entire software installation
> (including off-
> network operating system) several times, tried logging serial port coms etc
> etc, all to no avail. We still can't even determine if it a software or
> hardware
> issue.
>

To figure out if it is the software, install and use another software. if
it also crashes, it is a hardware issue:

www.micro-manager.org

In addition, if you use open source software like this we have a much
greater chance of being able to pin-point which part of your hardware is
failing.

One problem you might run into: I don't know if the SIS camera works
outside cell^p. Many of the big companies sell crappy hardware without any
consideration of compatibility (or rather, they don't want it). If that's
the case I guess you have to borrow another camera for the testing.

/Johan


-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Johan Henriksson
PhD student, Karolinska Institutet
http://mahogny.areta.org  http://www.endrov.net