We had the XL upgrade installed on three of our 373 machines about a month
ago. Since the upgrade, we have had numerous problems. We have lost two gels
on one of the machines due to an insufficient number of scans. One run only
had 230 scans collected and the second run had 750 scans before it stopped.
The log files for both of these runs showed they ran the full 14 hours we had
them set at. Unfortunately, we run the machines overnight and no one was
around to catch the problems when they happened. Everything seemed fine when
we left at night. We have also had strange things happen to the other two
machines during the prerun and loading stage. Sometimes the program will just
quit when we try to resume the prerun mode or when we try to start the run up
and the machine will say the run was completed.
I've called Tech Support about these problems, and they told me to try a total
reset on the machines as well as resetting the translation processors. I have
had to do this too many times in my eyes. Before the upgrade on these
machines, I have probably only needed to totally reset my machines four times
in the last five years.
I was wondering if there are other people out there who have had similar
problems with their upgrades and what they recommend trying.
I would appreciate any words of wisdom from any of you.
Thanks.
Christine Bogle
DNA Sequencing Facility
Molecular Biology Core Facilities
Dana Farber Cancer Institute
Boston, MA 02115
(617) 632-3082
christine_bogle@dfci.harvard.edu