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Hello Gary Laevsky & Michael Cammer, it is somewhat comforting (but also 
infuriating) to hear that there are more people out there unable to get 
GE to service their DeltaVision microscopes. I really do not understand 
their strategy, they are surely alienating a lot of customers. There are 
two of us here at UVM and we are both currently unserviceable according 
to GE. It would perhaps be interesting to find out how many out there 
are in this situation and maybe try to figure out a solution as a group.

The most baffling aspect of this is that GE are perfectly willing to 
provide you off-contract service provided that you pay for the parts and 
labor, but when it comes to getting a contract, the microscopes are 
supposedly not serviceable due to their age. That doesn't add up.

David Strachan, thank you for letting me know about IMSOL, I have sent 
them an email and will update the list if they get back to me with 
anything useful.

Is anyone well-versed enough on Linux to know how to somewhat 
reverse-engineer things and find out whether I can use the softWoRx 
upgrade packages to install from scratch? It seems to me that the 
packages are big enough to contain all the software, and that there 
should be some way to do this.

Mel

On 11/10/2014 9:07 AM, Cammer, Michael wrote:
> Would be interested to know  if anyone has been able to get GE to service any DeltaVision products or to release enough information to work on them yourselves.
> Ok to reply off line or call if you prefer.
> Thanks!
>
> ===========================================================================
> Michael Cammer, Microscopy Core & Skirball Institute, NYU Langone Medical Center
> Cell:  914-309-3270   note that we do not receive messages left at 212-263-3208
> http://ocs.med.nyu.edu/microscopy & http://microscopynotes.com/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gary Laevsky
> Sent: Monday, November 10, 2014 8:17 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: DeltaVision softWoRx Workstation (CentOS) HDD crash - rebuilding system from scratch
>
> *****
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>
> Along this line, we have just inherited a Deltavision, that GE will not service.  Does anyone know of a stateside third party that will service this instrument?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Gary
>
>
> Gary Laevsky, Ph.D.
> Confocal Imaging Facility Manager
> Dept. of Molecular Biology
> Washington Rd.
> Princeton University
> Princeton, New Jersey, 08544-1014
> (O) 609 258 5432
> (C) 508 507 1310
>
> On Mon, Nov 10, 2014 at 5:52 AM, David Strachan < [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> *****
>> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
>> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
>> *****
>>
>> Hi Menelaos Symeonides,
>>
>> One thing I would try is to recover the old drive, there is a product
>> from www.grc.com<http://www.grc.com> called spinrite, the main man
>> there is Steve Gibson who is a host of a podcast called 'security now'
>> on the TWIT network.
>>
>> I have never used the product personally but watched a colleague of
>> mine use it on a drive and it worked.
>>
>>
>> Or you could try these guys, they have been providing sales and
>> service of the DeltaVision systems for many years in the UK, I am not
>> sure how long they have left before GE take over here as well.
>>
>> Image Solutions (UK) Ltd
>> IMSOL House Cable Court, Pittman Way
>> Preston
>> PR2 9YW
>> United Kingdom
>> Tel.:  +44 (0) 1772 663 140
>> Fax.:  +44 (0) 1772 663 150
>> Email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>>
>> Hope this helps.
>>
>>
>> regards
>>
>>
>> David Strachan
>> Beatson Institute for Cancer Research
>> Glasgow
>> Scotland
>>
>>
>>
>> On 9 Nov 2014, at 16:25, Menelaos Symeonides <[log in to unmask]<mailto:
>> [log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> We have a DeltaVision DV/U series microscope on an Olympus IX70 base.
>> This is the slightly older configuration which uses two computers, a
>> workstation PC running CentOS Linux and softWoRx, and the IC/MIC which
>> runs Windows XP and controls the light source/camera/stage motors. We
>> love this scope and have published with it a lot, but unfortunately
>> we've had a lot of issues with support, especially since API was
>> bought out by GE Healthcare. Because it is an older model, GE has
>> denied us a new service contract and has only offered the option of
>> fully upgrading the microscope for over $100k in order to become
>> eligible for a service contract.
>>
>> Recently our microscope became inoperable because the Workstation PC's
>> hard drive crashed. After analyzing the drive from a different
>> computer, it looks like a good 30% of it is inaccessible, but I was
>> able to recover important files such as
>> /usr/local/softWoRx/config/Resolve3D.SYS and our network configuration
>> files. Also, I've put a new blank drive on the computer and installed
>> CentOS from scratch, and the computer works fine, but I do not have
>> the softWoRx packages to install the software and run the microscope.
>> The IC/MIC is intact and I can fully initialize the microscope by
>> accessing the IC/MIC directly, so there are no other hardware issues.
>>
>> The only service option that GE has offered to us is to completely
>> replace the Workstation PC for about $10,000. Obviously it is
>> unreasonable to do that given that the PC is completely fine and all
>> it needs is a new HDD with the software installed. Besides, we were
>> also told that this brand new Workstation would only come with 3
>> months' warranty, so if anything else were to go wrong with it in 4
>> months, that'd be another $10,000 down the drain, so to speak.
>>
>> CentOS is of course free, and we own a softWoRx license that is
>> attached to the MAC address of our computer's network interface, but
>> we cannot find the software anywhere. All we can find are the upgrade
>> packages on API's support website, but those don't seem to be able to
>> establish a softWoRx installation from scratch. When I install the
>> upgrade packages and try to run softWoRx, it returns a "segmentation
>> fault (core dumped)" error that is very hard to debug. I am fairly
>> comfortable with using Linux but I don't know the specificities of how
>> API sets up the softWoRx environment, the license manager, etc.
>>
>> Has anyone been in a similar situation, i.e. have you had to install
>> softWoRx from scratch? Were you able to find the appropriate packages
>> and do this on a fresh CentOS installation? I would really be
>> interested in hearing your experiences with trying to do anything
>> similar to this, and any other ideas of how we could rescue our system
>> given that all we really need is software.
>>
>> Menelaos Symeonides
>>