Packard Beta Liquid Scintillation Detector

["William L. McDowell" <wmcdowellphd@amrad.com>]

Radsafe Subscribers,



We recently moved a Packard 3170 beta LSC from our New Mexico facility

to the one in Louisiana and at that time the operating software was

"upgraded".  Since that time the instrument refuses to count more than

18 samples under a single counting protocol; it simply skips any

additional samples and moves on to the next protocol flag.  It also

refuses to count more than six samples in a designated quench curve

count.  We have been able to work around the quench curve problem by

counting the quenched standards as "samples" and constructing the

appropriate curves external to the beta LSC.  Since our data management

system expects to just see counts per minute data coming from the

instrument this is not too much of a bother.  The limit of 18 samples to

a single protocol is a problem.



I have called Packard and at various times I have been told:



1) This is the way the software is designed and that we will need

another upgrade if we want to count more than 18 samples under a single

protocol.



2) Restart the computer/instrument and it should be fine.



3) Just erase and then rewrite all my analysis protocols and they should

work correctly.



4) Reload the operating software.



5) Its not their problem since we didn't see the situation occur when

the new software was first installed.





I have done #2, #3, and #4 and this does not help.

I find #1 extremely hard to believe.

As for #5,. . .no comment.



So, has anyone seen this problem?



Bill McDowell



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