Stage lock-up during mapping

[Mike Matthews]

I no longer seem to be able to complete stage map acquisitions: The run seems to start OK but then halts part way through. The position seems to be random, it might be the first set of maps or the second or third. When it's stopped the stage control is completely locked up - I have to reboot the JEOL OPE to recover it. Is there a way of logging what calls and responses are going on between PI and the instrument to see exactly what's hanging?

[John Donovan]

I no longer seem to be able to complete stage map acquisitions: The run seems to start OK but then halts part way through. The position seems to be random, it might be the first set of maps or the second or third. When it's stopped the stage control is completely locked up - I have to reboot the JEOL OPE to recover it. Is there a way of logging what calls and responses are going on between PI and the instrument to see exactly what's hanging?

Hi Mike,
Sorry to hear that. Yes you can turn on driver logging in the Setup | Probe Setup dialog, but I suspect that will not help as I'm sure it's an instrument problem.

Did you try the JEOL software with the same map parameters as Probe Image?

Time for a service visit I would guess.
john

[Mike Matthews]

Thanks John, it could well be instrumental. I have seen lock-ups running the JEOL mapping but strangely it consistently runs longer before locking up than through PI (albeit with a small sample - it's very time consuming to test!). I'm hoping the logging will help diagnose if there's a consistent point of failure or if it is just random.

[John Donovan]

Thanks John, it could well be instrumental. I have seen lock-ups running the JEOL mapping but strangely it consistently runs longer before locking up than through PI (albeit with a small sample - it's very time consuming to test!). I'm hoping the logging will help diagnose if there's a consistent point of failure or if it is just random.

Hi Mike,
Well that clinches it. If both the JEOL and PI apps are locking up *at all*, then it's an instrument issue.  The two apps have nothing else in common on the 8500 (and 8900/8200) as they both are talking directly to the JEOL system controller.

PI might "ping" the instrument a bit more than the JEOL mapping app, so that might explain why it might seem to take the JEOL app longer to trigger lockup, but this is almost certainly an instrument hardware or electronic issue.

Please do let us know what your service guys finds.
john

PS: Did you see these beautiful stage maps I did recently:

http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=73.msg5130#msg5130

If you were a sharpe eyed sort of person you might notice that the stage coordinates are in JEOL units!  So how did that happen?  Well silly me, I forgot to switch my config back to Cameca mode and so it (properly) calculated everything in JEOL coordinates and orientation when I quantified the maps!

 

[Mike Matthews]

Well the error logging worked a treat - I set it to verbose mode and opened the performance monitors on both the PfE and JEOL PC'S then sat and watched....and of course the maps ran without a hitch! It's good to know that neither PC is struggling for memory or cpu allocation so the problem's not that. I'm in Philadelphia next week but I'll run some more tests when I get back.

Nice stage maps by the way.