Question about ThermoNSS + PFE to get around JEOL EIKS image speed limitations

[Dan R]

Hello all-
I was wondering if anyone has thought about or tried to install a ThermoNSS system (without purchasing or installing the EDS part of the unit) to access fast BSE and SE image acquisition with PFE on a JEOL 8530 or similar... would this work? Does anyone know of a system where this has succeeded?
Thanks for any insights,
Dan

[Dan R]

All-
We were able to connect our 8530F to our Thermo NSS system and I can get the TestEDS.exe program to communicate and try to take a spectrum. However, I would like to be able to use the thermo system to collect a fast image using PFE. Is there some additional setting that I need to turn on? PFE still seems to be using the old slow mapping commands to collect SE or BSE images. Is what I’m trying to do not possible?
Thanks,
-Dan

[Probeman]

All-
We were able to connect our 8530F to our Thermo NSS system and I can get the TestEDS.exe program to communicate and try to take a spectrum. However, I would like to be able to use the thermo system to collect a fast image using PFE. Is there some additional setting that I need to turn on? PFE still seems to be using the old slow mapping commands to collect SE or BSE images. Is what I’m trying to do not possible?
Thanks,
-Dan

Hi Dan,
If TestEDS works then you're 99% of the way there.

You simply need to change the interface type in the imaging section.  Here is the relevant section of my probewin.ini file:

[Image]
ImageInterfacePresent=1
ImageInterfaceType=10         ; 0=demo, 4=JEOL, 5=SX100, 6=SX100 video, 9=Bruker API, 10=Thermo API
ImageInterfaceImageIxIy="1.3333"                    ; SX100 Video Ix/Iy (4:3 for SX100)

You should make the aspect ratio equal that of the Thermo NSS image display.

[Julien]

I have been attempting to set the image acquisition with Thermo. It appears to work, as the image (BSE or SE) is being acquired and display in the Thermo NSS software. However, when the acquisition is over, the image is somehow not transmitted properly to Probe for EPMA. Probe for EPMA appears to freeze, and after a while, an error appears:

"Error #5 returned from Thermo EDS interface (socket timeout error) when calling function TEVB_RetrieveGreyImageCSV [ix/iy:128x128]”.

Any suggestions? Thermo and PfE are installed on the same computer, and all other functions with Thermo (EDS-WDS analysis) are working just fine.

Julien

[John Donovan]

I have been attempting to set the image acquisition with Thermo. It appears to work, as the image (BSE or SE) is being acquired and display in the Thermo NSS software. However, when the acquisition is over, the image is somehow not transmitted properly to Probe for EPMA. Probe for EPMA appears to freeze, and after a while, an error appears:

"Error #5 returned from Thermo EDS interface (socket timeout error) when calling function TEVB_RetrieveGreyImageCSV [ix/iy:128x128]”.

Any suggestions? Thermo and PfE are installed on the same computer, and all other functions with Thermo (EDS-WDS analysis) are working just fine.

Hi Julien,
Many customers are using the Thermo imaging interface with PFE so not sure what the problem might be.  Does it only occur with the largest image sizes?

I thought we had this working when I visited in May. Did you update the Thermo NSS software?  If so, you need to find the latest teportal.dll and socketdll.dll files (in the NSS application folder) and copy them to the SysWOW64 folder (or the PFE app folder or where ever the existing dlls are located) and overwrite the older dlls. 

I've asked Thermo to automatically install their teportal.dll and socketdll.dll files to the system folder when their installer runs, because otherwise when someone updates their NSS software, the update can break some functions in the TE Portal API.  They have said that they will add this soon to the installer.  But in the meantime we have to manually copy these dlls to the proper location.

If you really get stuck I can have one of our specialists contact you.
john