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I've recently found the Molecular Dynamics newsgroup to be helpful on old
equipment issues, and I have more to bring up.  This concerns a
Continuum/Quantel TDL60 dye laser.  It seems there's no hope of getting any
kind of assistance from Continuum.  I'm having some problems with the
wavelength (grating angle) control which, if they cannot be resolved, may
consign an otherwise very nice dye laser to the junk heap.

The grating angle is changed by a stepping motor.  It is controlled by a
motion control board meant to fit into an ISA slot of a computer and run
under a DOS program called ND60, ND62 or variants.  The original ND60
program was useless because it did not allow independent control of
stepping from another computer; ND62, a later version, at least addressed
this issue with a mode called "burst mode"  (i.e. ttl pulse signal
handshake with the motion control board.  Now I have two problems:

(1)  Hardware/physical connection problem: There is irregular control of
the wavelength (sometimes "go to wavelength" commands successful but
usually not.  This is possibly a connection problem (not yet found) or some
other probably resolvable hardware one.  I have no schematics,
troubleshooting information, or even meaningful information on these
components.  Does anyone have any more documentation/information?

(2) Software:  This is less urgent, but anyone who has information on (1)
may well have information here too.  ND60 and ND62 are not very good
programs written in Quickbasic, which easily could be improved/customized
if the source code were available.  When the product was still current,
Continuum refused to provide it on the grounds that it was "proprietary"--
even when ND60 was basically useless (and could have been modified by a
user to the equivalent of ND62 probably in minutes).  Over this time, I
think that some users managed to get hold of the source code.  Does anyone
still have the source code to ND60, ND62, or one of the other versions that
may have appeared.

I'll disseminate whatever I get to anyone who might be interested and
inquires in a week or so, after all responses should be in.

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