Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 11:50:37 -0800 (PST)
Subject: On some of lots of things
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X-Sender: claudio@quartz.geology.utoronto.ca

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Starting with Tom Hulsebosch printing problems. We have a SUN3/260 with a

DEC LA75 printer, and we ran into the same problem several months ago,

when it first appeared on printing results of an

unattended run, and kept occurring with files of any size. Rebooting worked

some of the times and, of course, resetting the printing processes by

means of lpc did clear the jam. The problem disappeared when the serial

line to the printer was moved to another port (there was also some

scrambled printing along with the clogging, which I seem to recall gave

us some clues). The problem has reappeared quite recently, again in

connection with the printing of large

files from overnight runs (more than 200 analyses).I quickly thought of

hardware (port) failure, but Edgar Chavez disagrees and is rather

convinced that the problem rests with the slow serial line, more prone to

jams, and that it is more likely to occurr when printing large

files. He also does

not rule out the possibility that the new software may have been written

to take full advantage of the new, faster computers and that it may not

work as well with the older ones. If the latter is right, and since we

have installed the new

software only recently, it may take care of my wondering why the

problem should suddenly reappear after a long interval of trouble free

printing. To compleat the picture, the last time

the printing "jammed", the printer queue listed the following two

processes:'standard input' and '/tmp/quantiprint', neither of which I had

seen before. On rebooting, the first was printed and the second

disappeared.



Passing on to the geolabels, I have little to contribute, except that I

too have avoided them as much as possible, because of reports of errors

and lack of quickly available information on the details of the

recalculations procedures. We are using geo for olivines and for

feldspars, and recently I added micas, when I got to know the fine points

of declaring F as either a cation or an anion! And do I ever agree with

Leonard's comments on the lack of Cameca user instructions! I keep

thinking of the Cameca 'rest' task (to automatically shut down unattended

runs), not referred to in any manuals and not mentioned to me

during the initial training (which can happen of course, but that's where

a manual would help).

Anyways, I'd be more than happy to benefit from improvements made to geo.



As for the reconditioning of ion pump elements, the supplier we went to

is DUNIWAY STOCKROOM CORPORATION, 1600 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View,

CA 94093; tel 415-9698811, Fax 415-9650764. They also sell new elements.



On the spectrometer motor topic, and with an eye to the unavoidable future,

I am very much interested in Bruce's suggestion to set up a consortium as

a way of saving $$$. Does anyone already have some information on

the manufacturer's

or his agents' whereabouts? I am willing to look into it, if there is

enough interest.



Regards to all. claudio cermignani



Claudio Cermignani

Dept. of Geology

University of Toronto

22 Russell St.

Toronto, Canada M5S 3B1



phone 416 9785420

fax 9783938