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Electronics components are more often all or none in failure modes.  
Connectors are a different issue tho'. and more likely to fail. Try re- 
plugging in  all the connectors you can.  Also, I assume you have  
checked/tested and proved that it's not the laser illumination side of  
things?

Hope this helps

Mark


On 23/10/2010, at 8:19 AM, Sandrine Pouvreau wrote:

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>
> Hi all.
> We have a confocal microscope LSM 5 exciter (Zeiss) which is lately  
> having
> some troubles. In brief, the fluorescence intensity is changing  
> during the
> record, in a line –related pattern (in other word, the intensity  
> changes happen
> on one or several lines of the picture).
> Either we have a good resolution/high intensity picture, and the  
> intensity is
> dropping, or we have a poor resolution/low intensity picture, and  
> the intensity
> is abruptly increasing. This seems to (although we are not sure yet  
> about this
> part) increase when the confocal is on for a long time.
> Did somebody experience the same phenomenon with a similar system?
> The technician from Zeiss told us it could be a problem with one the
> acquisition cards. However, our end of the year budget does not  
> allow us to
> change them. Is there any way we can try to at least minimize the  
> problem?
> Thanks a lot.
> Regards
> Sandrine