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Right, they won't even work on mine off contract.
The reason I'm looking for a third party vendor is because I can't get any
documentation.
I will share if I do, Michael and Menelaos, please do the same!
Thanks!
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 9:53 AM, Menelaos Symeonides <[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.
> *****
>
> 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
>>
>> *****
>> 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.
>> *****
>>
>> 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
>>>
>>>
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