[RASMB] raptor problems

[John Philo]

Michael,

The Raptor video card is EXTREMELY fussy about both computers and operating
system. I can't imagine that anyone at Beckman would have told you that you
could swap in a computer not supplied and tested by Beckman and not have
problems. I know that even when Beckman orders what is ostensibly the same
computer model from IBM, they find that some will not run reliably due to
minor changes in motherboard components or BIOS versions.

To my knowledge **officially** the data acquisition software will not run
under anything but Windows 95, although I hear it does appear to work under
Windows 98. I believe they will shortly switch to Windows NT or 2000.

There are also issues of interrupt conflicts with the Raptor board, which is
not really at all 'plug-and-play' compatible. Usually this only arises when
there is a network interface in the computer, which tends to grab the
interrupt line the Raptor board insists on using. Beckman has some
documentation about this network card issue and how to work around it.

So I'm afraid you have headed down a troublesome and painful path. My
advice: go back to your old computer, put it on the network, and transfer
the data to your new one via the network. Or wait until Beckman switches
over to using Windows 2000 and MAYBE your new computer will work then.

John Philo

-----Original Message-----
From: rasmb-admin at server1.bbri.org
[mailto:rasmb-admin at server1.bbri.org]On Behalf Of Michael Bovee
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 11:01 AM
To: rasmb at server1.bbri.org
Subject: [RASMB] raptor problems


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Hi RASMBers,

We recently set up a new IBM PC with large hard drive capacity to run
our XL-I.  It came preconfigured with Windows 2000, which we wanted
no part of, so we installed Win98 on it instead.  (the old computer
setup was Win95, but for a number of reasons we wanted to update to
Win98, and initially our rep didn't seem to caution about any
problems with that.)

Well, we seem to have all the newest from Beckman (software p4.5b)
but now we cannot launch the software without crashing the raptor
fringe display.  Closer inspection reveals at least 2 versions of
raptor, and previously I guess we were using Raptor95.  By separately
launching a different version (just plain Raptor) first and then
launching the data acqusition application, we seem to have a tenuous
workaround that allows us to collect data again, but it crashed part
way through one user's run last nite.

I'm looking for a better solution from other Win98 users.  Eproms and
all physical connections have been double checked for proper
connections, etc. and the setup seemed to be working correctly the
first time it was launched to check things out, but now...

Kind Regards,
--Michael
--
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Michael L. Bovee, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Vermont
Department of Biochemistry
B403 Given Building
Burlington, VT  05405-0068
email: mbovee at zoo.uvm.edu
http://biochem.uvm.edu
Lab   802-656-0345
FAX  802-862-8229
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