Within our improvement program, we linked the DataBus of Aspect to the
printer port of PC. The self-made connecting interface divides each Aspect
word (24 bits) into three bytes and sends them sequentally to PC, or gets
three bytes from PC combining them into one Aspect word. The data transfer
rate is about 100 KB/sec.
The support of our interface required modification of Adakos-89. The PC
running under MS-DOS ('PC-box') is connected to LAN via Ethernet. It also
allowed to replace Silent and Cherry keyboards with standard PC keyboards.
Except the obvious convinience such as using right keypad for Y-scaling,
it consumes connecting the barcode reader between the keyboard and PC-box.
PC system requirements are the following: Intel-compatible CPU 286 or
higher, at least 1MB memory, hard disk depending on your needs. The
monitor is optional but convenient.
This very simple system revealed the following advantages:
- Fast Adakos and DISNMR access to the hard disk of PC, as /=D7. This
gives the unlimited disk space for the storage of local spectra.
- Fast access to this disk (=D7) from any workstation within LAN. 16KW
spectrum is transfered for less than 1 sec.
- All the FIDs acquisited are automatically stored on the spectral
server. This special spectral FTP-server (ftp://nmr-service.ioc.ac.ru)
was established for external data processing, so that any registered
scientist may take his FIDs to process at his PC.
- PC-box is used as retranslator for spectra printing and external
storage. Each plotcode passed from Aspect port D is stored in the
chemist's directory on the spectral server and forwarded to the nearest
network printer. Using the laser printer instead of the Aspect's plotter
increses the routine work productivity.
- PC-box emulates the Aspect terminal, forwarding each keycode to the
Aspect port A. The barcode reader connected between keyboard and PC-box
allows fast entering the spectrum title (off the sample label) excluding
mistypes. Command history list and hotkeys (ALT-key) were also made
available.
- PC-box adds the chemical structure (if the structure file is found on
the spectral server) and the bar code (title) to each plotcode it
transferres.
- The record about each spectrum is added to the database and every
morning the report is updated. It includes information about any
activity in our lab: who, when, what, at which spetctrometer, for whom
and how many.
- "Intel Outside!". FIDs may be Fast-Fourier-Transformed at
PC box. Using PC-box as FT-coprocessor significantly increases the speed
of Fourier Transformation
All these advantages allowed us to increase the quality
and productivity of the routine spectral services on our old spectrometers
more than three times.
Besides this we set up self-made aluminium tinfoil Faraday shields in all 5 mm probeheads, which resulted in significant line shape improvement.
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