PHA after Peaking wrinkles

[Doug_Meier]

I've just completed the upgrade to PFE 11.4.9 on the JEOL JXA-8200. I set up an analysis of K-412, analyzing one metal per spectrometer. I set up the run much as I would have in version 10.X.X. In the peaking dialogue, I checked to option to do a manual PHA following peaking, as is my habit (and if the PHA adjustment is considerable, I peak again after the PHA has been tuned). I hit the start peaking button. Peaking begins nearly simultaneously on all five spectrometers. So far so good.

Then two problems occur.

Problem 1: Three of the spectrometers finish peaking before the other two are finished. One of them then activates the manual PHA window. Simultaneously, the remaining two spectrometers stop peaking, and do not proceed when the PHA window is closed. The only way out is to cancel the peaking operation.

Problem 2: If I run the PHAs anyway, tuning up the gain, the voltage, and the acceptance window, everything does as it should within the manual PHA adjustment window. Traditionally, upon closing this window one is returned to the table that contains the values for each spectrometer, including your newly updated values. However, in my current build I am returned to this table to discover that nothing has been updated. The default values are still in place.

My first inclination upon seeing this problem was that my new IT security environment was clashing with PFE. By default, the computer allows no user or program to modify any file within the Program Files directory, among others. However, when I changed the folder permissions (and even when I ran the same exercise as administrator), the same problem occurred. So while the security environment clash did prevent other things from working correctly (eg. reloading an old PFE data file did not also reload its Analyzed and Specified Elements), it isn't causing my present issue.

Fortunately I have a work-around for both problems. By unchecking the manual PHA box in the Peaking dialogue and otherwise peaking as normal, I can peak up all five spectrometers without incident, despite the fact that they don't all finish at exactly the same time. Once completed, I go to the PHA button and select and tune each spectrometer from the table, one at a time. This exercise updates the table as normal. Despite that, I cannot help but wonder what mistakes I made in upgrading to version 11.4.9. If anyone has had a similar issue and can point me to the solution, or if someone can point me to a general list of things I should check with my build that helps to iron out odd wrinkles such as the ones I describe, that'd be swell.

Thanks in Advance,

Doug

[John Donovan]

Hi Doug,
I haven't used the manual PHA feature in a long time.  I will have to check that it still works as expected. I'm actually not sure why I even have this feature.  I might just remove the manual PHA code!

But please note that the manual PHA option is supposed to halt the spectrometer by loading a modal dialog.  Otherwise the code will proceed to the next element on that spectrometer.

Until then just use the normal PHA acquisition mode which will acquire a PHA scan automatically after each spectrometer is peaked.

Also please update to 11.5.1.
john

Edit by John: The manual PHA (I tried the "after peaking" option) worked as expected.  That is, it stopped all peaking acquisitions, loaded the manual PHA dialog for each element, I then ran a PHA scan manually and clicked OK and OK, and the manual PHA scan was saved properly.

On closer examination I do see your problem #2, that is: any changes to the PHA settings are not recorded.  This is by design though I can understand why one might want the changes recorded to the current sample.  Let me see how hard it is to do this.

[John Donovan]

Hi Doug,
I modified the "manual PHA before/after peaking" code to save any changes you manually make to the PHA settings.

You can download the latest version now (version number is still 11.5.1).

When the manual PHA dialog pops up for manual PHA adjustments, it will halt the current peaking because- well, because it's manual!   And it has to to allow you to make any PHA adjustments before going to the next element/standard.

But it will save any PHA changes you make to the current sample (assuming the current sample has no point data). If the current sample has data, it will apply the changes to the next new sample.
john