Jerrilyn,
First off, never ever do anything else on the mac that is collecting
data when it's collecting data. ABI's software does strange things and breaks
many of Apple's rules, so just do data collection and nothing else.
Second, if you mac is in a network, don't have any other computers
mounted by Appleshare or any other method as if the network glitch's then
all hell breaks loose and data is lost.
Third, prior to each run, restart the mac with "extensions-off".
This is done by re-starting the mac while holding down the "shift" key.
And, collect the data while the mac is in
Forth, use some utility to "optimize" your hard disk at least once
a month. Fragmented data is a big problem for the ABI software so also make
sure your hard disk is <50% full before doing the optimization.
Fifth, go into the preferences folder in the system folder and remove
the two files that have ABI preferences (they are blank icons) and the re-start
with extensions-off after doing an optimization. These files will get re-built
when you re-start the programs.
Best of luck.
Cheers........bruce
***************************************************************************
Bruce A. Roe, Ph.D Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019-0370, U.S.A.
Phone: (405) 325-4912 or 7610; FAX: (405) 325-7762; e-mail: broe at uoknor.edu
********************** http://dna1.chem.uoknor.edu/ ***********************
You write:
=>
=> Mark Band,
=>
=> We've been using our ABI 377 for almost a year and have problems with
=> it responding as well. When I have asked tech support about the
=> problems, they have said to reinstall the firmware, but that hasn't
=> helped much. I have found that the status window is very helpful. If
=> we wait until that window catches up with the actual status of the
=> machine, we can successfully give the machine commands. Also, if we
=> look at the status window when we start a run, I have found that the
=> time left in the run can sometimes be wrong (i.e., the pre-run is for
=> one hour, and at the beginning of the run it only has twenty minutes
=> remaining). These runs will terminate prematurely if they are not
=> cancelled and restarted. I have not found this to happen in the run
=> itself, but only in the pre-run, which is not very critical and the
=> machine is not unsupervised.
=>
=> I've had my runs crash in the middle as well, but usually only if I'm
=> running another application at the same time. I should have plenty of
=> RAM to run several programs at once, but while the machine is
=> collecting data, I seem to crash every other day. I almost always
=> restart successfully, but I usually lose whatever I am working on
=> outside of the collection. I haven't ever crashed during an
=> unsupervised run - no one is working on the computer and running any
=> outside applications.
=>
=> Hope my experience can help!!
=>
=> Jerrilyn Pederson
=> NMSU Cotton Genetics Lab
=> Las Cruces, NM
=>
