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Solve : ISA to PCI? |
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Answer» Hi Note:Where are you getting these dollar values? They're totally absurd. You could buy a new computer for a few hundred $. Quote from: k_mohsen on April 02, 2011, 10:07:34 AM Old days PCs have ISA slot for installing expansion card. Now, PCs have PCI.Specifically, what type of expansion care are you talking about? Surely, the device you're talking about is available in a newer PCI or PCIe format. Unreal...hire me. And i'll bring Soybean along as an advisor...at the going rate ... Quote from: soybean on April 02, 2011, 11:41:59 AM Whew, this is one of the more bizarre posts I've seen in awhile. Where are you getting these dollar values? They're totally absurd. You could buy a new computer for a few hundred $. Come on guys. It doesn't seem bizarre to me. Yes we know that ordinary home or office PCs only cost a few hundred US dollars. A lot of laboratory and industrial equipment is controlled by PCs. The value of the equipment may be many times the cost of a PC. Think about electron microscopes or gas chromatography equipment or 101 other kinds of high tech gear. Specialised ISA cards (still an industry standard) which are manufactured in small quantities to high specifications can also be expensive. THis is not a mass produced consumer grade expansion card we are talking about here. SIM GmbH is a German state of the art company focused on activities in the field of chromatography. I can easily imagine 4 million dollars worth of their equipment, if this is who k_mohsen meant by SIMS. Maybe you didn't read the question very carefully?Well, Salmon Trout, what is "SIMS"? My Google search shows nothing about some kind of testing equipment by that name? But he's not looking to replace a gas chromatography or electron microscope piece of equipment... Quote from: patio on April 02, 2011, 11:58:44 AM But he's not looking to replace a gas chromatography or electron microscope piece of equipment... No. he wants or needs to replace the computer controlling it. And the interface is a specialised expansion card which would cost $6000 to replace. So to save this expenditure he wants a PC -- with an ISA slot -- that costs less than $6000. Which he has been guided towards. Quote from: soybean on April 02, 2011, 11:56:27 AM Well, Salmon Trout, what is "SIMS"? My Google search shows nothing about some kind of testing equipment by that name? Maybe you didn't search properly. Have I said or done something to annoy you people? What's with the doubt and undermining and quibbling? SECONDARY-ion mass spectrometry is what I believe he is referring to. Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) is a technique used in materials science and surface science to analyze the composition of solid surfaces and thin films by sputtering the surface of the specimen with a focused primary ion beam and collecting and analyzing ejected secondary ions. These secondary ions are measured with a mass spectrometer to determine the elemental, isotopic, or molecular composition of the surface. SIMS is the most sensitive surface analysis technique, being able to detect ELEMENTS present in the parts per billion range. Dependent on the SIMS type, there are three basic analyzers available: sector, quadrupole, and time-of-flight. A sector field mass spectrometer uses a combination of an electrostatic analyzer and a magnetic analyzer to separate the secondary ions by their mass to charge ratio. A quadrupole mass analyzer separates the masses by resonant electric fields, which allow only the selected masses to pass through. The time of flight mass analyzer separates the ions in a field-free drift path according to their kinetic energy. It requires pulsed secondary ion generation using either a pulsed primary ion gun or a pulsed secondary ion extraction. It is the only analyzer type able to detect all generated secondary ions simultaneously, and is the standard analyzer for static SIMS instruments. Here is a time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometer, that looks like it cost every cent of 4 million dollars. The PC controlling it is on the desk to the left. I wasn't quibbling... Merely suggesting they may not be locked into an ISA solution for their issues...there may be alternatives...that's all.k_mohsen, you could email the manufacturers of the SIMS or maybe Mr.Subhash Lokhre in the SIMS Laboratory at IIT Bombay and ask what the PC is that they use... http://www.rsic.iitb.ac.in/SIMS.html Quote from: patio on April 02, 2011, 12:24:02 PM I wasn't quibbling... Yes, $6000 for a PCI card I believe... and no, you weren't quibbling. A lot of industrial and scientific equipment still uses ISA. Quote from: Salmon Trout on April 02, 2011, 12:11:57 PM Maybe you didn't search properly.I simply searched on SIMS. Without knowing about the meaning of the acronym as it's being used here, how else could I have searched? And, without knowing the meaning of SIMS, as used here, yes, I definitely was skeptical about the dollar amounts he was stating. And, I think most people reading this would have been skeptical. I mean, come on now, how many of us are familiar with Secondary-ion mass spectrometry and the acronym for such testing equipment? The original post should have spelled out the meaning of the acronym in this case. |
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