OEM Spark Triathlon Communication Problems

[labstephan]

Dear all,

I have a OEM Spark Triathlon (LC Packings FAMOS Firmware 1.14) which I want to use with Clarity.
Unfortunately there are some problems.
In Setup, Autodetect says Triathlon and also the Cooling option where found. But the communication parameters shown there are wrong Com9, 9600, no parity, 8, 2. They are Com9, 9600, no parity, 8, 1.
By the way. When I start Clarity the Triathlon is detected. When I get the method from the sampler there are some values wrong. These are the Washing Volume, Sample Loop Volume and the Tubing Volume. All these values look like multiplied by 100. The Wash Volume in Sampler is 300 but Clarity reads 30000 and so on.

When I correct the values and try to send the method to the sampler it seems that data transfer breaks down and starts new in a loop until I press "from AS".
In direct control I can Advance the Tray and everything else. No Problem.

I tried different COM Ports and Adapters. I also tried on Win XP and Win 7 (both german and english versions). Clarity 3 and 4. All the same behaviour.

Any Idea what to do?

[Daniel Mentlik]

Dear Stephan,
we will need the communication record and other diagnostic files to be able to find the reason of the behavior. Please note we have not encountered LC Packings autosampler so far, and as Spark quite often uses changes in the firmware or at least OEM model response string, it is possible that the FAMOS will not be compatible with the Triathlon driver. However, I would expect the communication to fail during the autodetect in such case, so definitely we will need more information.

The files to be sent to us are:

• 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

• and, most important, the communication record.

How to make the communication record is described in the Triathlon manual, chapter 6. Clarity must be closed while amending the commdrv.ini file, after it is changed, open the Clarity and perform all steps as you have described in your post, close Clarity, send us the communication report and once again set the logging to off. That way, the communication log will not be overwritten, or will not increase in size, which might eventually cause problems on the station. Please, send the gathered files to support@dataapex.com for inspection.