communication error

[rbell]

During a purification run there was a communication error. For some reason our Lab Alliance Series 1 pump kept running. The Biorad 2128 Fraction collector stopped on the 4th or 5th tube. Because the pump did not stop we lost all of our product. Normally when I have encountered a communication error the pump stops. What could have caused this?

Thanks,
Ryan

[Daniel Mentlik]

Dear Ryan,
from the description I'm not able to discern what the cause of the problem is. We will need a more complex bug report - please send us these diagnostic files:

• c:\clarity\clarity.cfg
• c:\clarity\clarity.dsk
• c:\clarity\systeminfo.txt
• c:\clarity\badtrace.txt and all *.dmp files (may not be present, they are created during some problems only)
• c:\clarity\log\ *.audit for the days the problem appeared
• chromatogram (*.prm), method (*.met) and sequence (*.seq) files related to the problem

The communication record would be also very helpful - to switch it on, open the commdrv.ini file found in the C:\clarity\ directory (you can edit it with Notepad or any other simple text editor) and edit the items for any COM port used for communication:

[COM1]
echo=OFF
textmode=ON
filename=CommDrvCOM1_%D.txt
reset=ON

You have to change line "echo=OFF" to "echo=ON" for every COM port, which communication you want to record. If you use the COM port number other than there is prepared, simply create the necessary section with the correct COMX in the heading, and also rename the filename accordingly. Record will be stored in the file named as in line "filename", in default it will be CommDrvCOM1_Current_Date (so you will get one file per every port and day.)