KMitchel - 4-12-2013 at 22:09
Hi,
I recently purchased an used Perkin Elmer FTIR Spectrum 2000 Spectrometer for my personal research.Unfortunately it has not come with the required PCI
Single Transputer card which is required to connect the FTIR Instrument to computer using a LEMO cable. This card need to be inserted into the
computer. Anybody has an idea where to buy such a Transputer card (INMOS B004 type or ISA card or something similar) or any other methods to establish
the connection? I have got the software and the Six pin LEMO cable, but only the missing thing is the Transputer card. Could you please help me?
Thank you! Kevin
Marvin - 6-12-2013 at 05:35
It seems that details of the link pinout are here.
It's a differential cable carrying an OSLink. This will be a 5, 10 or 20Mbit link.
You might be best contacting some transputer enthusiasts, but it's been a decade since I've seen much activity in those circles. Worst case it should
be possible to hack an interface together, but patching the software might take a bit of effort. When I needed to connect to a 20Mbit OSLink
interface I used an FPGA, but it's possible with a small CPLD and a 60MHz oscillator.
Fun project, I hope you get it working.
Thank you!
KMitchel - 6-12-2013 at 07:22
Thank you Marvin. Really appreciate your inputs. Since I have very limited knowledge in electronics, will go through all your inputs and make a
judgement. Any other inputs to make it simple will be highly apprecited given the background I have.
Kevin
Marvin - 6-12-2013 at 10:02
I have no experience with original INMOS hardware, everything I've done dates from after the transputer technology was acquired by ST Microelectronics
and they did wonderful things with it (the ST20 core is derived from the INMOS designs). So while I have some experience with the protocol, RESET and
ANALYSE, booting from a link and other low level stuff I've never used the original hardware or software. When STM moved to JTAG programming and
debug, which is very similar to a clocked OSLink in implementation, I abandoned my asynchronous OSLink interface.
For people with electronics experience the protocol is really well designed and modern FPGA/CPLD chips make it pretty trivial to interface to. The
CPU itself is brilliant and barking at the moon crazy. If you have to go this route I suggest bypassing all the B004 routines from the software
instead of trying to emulate the CPU in the interface. Hint: Any OS that runs this stuff should work with softice. This stuff is not easy but as a
long project it's feasible.
If you have no experience in electronics your best bet is to find an interface card. If you get a generic one you will probably have to wire the
cable from the usual BNC (apparently) to the LEMO connector. This would not be difficult and you can probably use regular cat5 network cable (just
check relevant documents to make sure cable impedance matches). Cat5 is designed for carrying multiple differential pairs without cross talk. I
advise you not to damage your existing cable, buy connectors. Might even be easier to desolder the BNC connectors and wire a connector to use your
original cable. You may need to change the ID of the card somehow so the software thinks it's a PE branded card. That bit is a guess, but I thought
I'd include.
That's pretty much everything I can think of for now.
ecphys - 29-12-2014 at 22:44
Hi, I also have a used Perkin Elmer FTIR Spectrum 2000 Spectrometer. However, the measurement computer is out of order, and I need to install the IR
spectroscopy software again in another new computer. There are systems that I can select during the installation, namely
Spectrum One A
Spectrum One B
Spectrum One C
Spectrum One D
Spectrum One Custom
Spectrum One NTS (non-LCD)
Spectrum One NTS (LCD)
Spectrum BX I
Spectrum BX II
Spectrum BX III
Spectrum BX IV
Spectrum BX V
Spectrum GX I
Spectrum GX II
Spectrum GX III
Spectrum GX Custom
Spectrum IdentiCheck
Spectrum Software
Which one should I choose for my system? Thanks.
Edward