From: Borries Demeler <demeler@bioc09.uthscsa.edu>
  To  : rasmb@bbri.harvard.edu
  Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 16:21:11 -0500 (CDT)

Beckman Data Acqu. software bug

To all RASMB'ers:

It has come to my attention that the Beckman XL-A Data Acqusition software
version 3.0 for Windows has a serious bug that affects all people who 
perform velocity experiments.

The software records the time for each scan incorrectly. It drops the 
last digit, so not only does it loose one significant digit, but it also 
records a time that is off by the factor of 10!

I have gotten a lot of phonecalls from UltraScan users that are trying to 
analyze their velocity data with it. The program can't handle this
exception. I have written a new editing program that will correct that 
error for all UltraScan analyses. It can be downloaded from the upgrade
site on my server. So: if you have velocity data that doesn't give you
the proper results, don't delete it! It can be salvaged with my program.
I will send out instructions for the downloading and installation
on the UltraScan mailing list.

For all others:

You can salvage your data by adding the digit "5" to the time column
in the second line in the header of each scan file.

Your data will be off by at most +/- 5 seconds, which is negligible on the 
scale of precision available from the XL-A.

I understand Beckman has now a version that fixes this bug. You may want to
call them and obtain an upgraded version, if you have this version of
buggy software.

Regards, -Borries

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* Borries Demeler                                                             *
* The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio                *
* Dept. of Biochemistry, 7703 Floyd Curl Drive, San Antonio, Texas 78284-7760 *
* Voice: (210) 567-6592 Fax: (210) 567-6595 Email: demeler@bioc02.uthscsa.edu *
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