Zeiss DSM 962

Our second scanning electron microscope. Nicknamed 'Kevin'. Quick specs:

Maximum acceleration voltage: 30kV

Spot size: 4nm @30kV, SEI

Manufacturing year: 1995 (?)

Attachments/options: Beam blanker, motorized stage, NORAN EDX

The DSM 962's main display is powered by the BIVAS, a separate box interconnected to many of the systems of the DSM itself:

The PC side of the BIVAS contains a Piads SBC288, a D3142 MFM hard drive, connected to a FINLUX MD640.350 electroluminescent display.

The SBC is (presumably, Source) powered by a 12MHz AMD-N80L286.

The harddrive is a NEC 3142 44MB MFM hard drive. In contrast to Source in the DSM's BIOS it must be configured as type 29: 1.024 Cylinders, 8 Heads, 17 Sectors.

The DSM supports up to three displays, the main display (built-in EL display) plus two external displays. Supposedly, the second external display is used by the EDX system (Todo: verify assumption), while the first external display is used to show images to the user (see image above, the screen on top of the DSM is connected as the first external display).

The main display's pinout seems to be the following: Source

The SBC runs a version of DOS 5.0 and a Zeiss/LEO-custom control software. Currently, version 2.3s seems to be installed; however we also possess the installation and boot disks for a version 2.0 and 2.13 (supposedly the DSM was originally shipped with 2.0 and then upgraded in the field later).

• V2.0 (C)92 Carl Zeiss
• V2.13 (C)93 Carl Zeiss
• V2.30 (C)1996 LEO GmbH

Part of the boot up is calling a program called init_sbc that supposedly restores (some of the) SBC's bios settings.

The SBC's CMOS Battery is completely dead and so it looses all settings on power down. Unfortunately we were unable to find an account of the original settings, yet we were able to bring up the DSM through a mention of the hard disk settings in one of the AUTOEXEC.BAT files on the installation disks.

The current bringup procedure is as follows (improve if you can!)

1. First turn on the DSM and let the CMOS checksum check fail
2. WAIT for the first timeout (if you press F1 directly, all CMOS defaults are cleared and extended memory will not work)
3. Press F1 and change the Diskette drive-0 to 1.4 Mb Fix-disk drive-0 type to 29 (no other drive settings know as of yet)
4. Store the settings (F2) and let the DSM boot

The DSM can be brought up in two different ways as of now.

= Full DSM (be careful!) = We can power on the full DSM, the entails cooling the whole analog logic inside the DSM's main module (with water!) and allows almost full operation (except for the column, for now). Before proceeding, make sure the water chiller is connected to the DSM (water hoses), is turned on and does not leak. Insert the way-too-premium custom power cable (gray cable, black plug) into the pRCD-equipped outlet. Make sure the gray IEC-cable (marked P1) is connected to the BIVAS.

WARNING: Doing this enables live voltage inside the DSM, regardless of the state of the main/secondary power switch on the DSM. Nice design Zeiss, thanks!

After this cable is connected the upper 3 LEDs on the Powersupply will turn on (again, regardless of the state of the power switch). Turn the power switch on (bringing up some more LEDs) and then turn the power key to enable power to the distribution panel, which will in turn bring up the BIVAS.

In this mode, all features should be available to you (except the column) and the DSM will boot up normally (see bringup for details).

= BIVAS only =

Rather than bringing up the full DSM, we can also just bring up the BIVAS along with the keyboard, floppy drive and screen.

Connect any IEC power cord to the BIVAS's P1 connector. Connect to the pRCD equipped outlet. Make sure the DSM's way-too-premium custom power cable (gray cable, black plug) is not connected. The BIVAS will turn immediately when power is applied, this is expected (it's not really meant to run standalone).

This mode will not currently boot into the DSM application, but it allows full access to the DOS prompt, however the whole main unit of the DSM can stay powered off, so no water-cooling is necessary.

The vacuum system looks like follows:

The original roughing pump (RP) is an Edwards E2M8 rotary pump, our DSM is equipped with a Pfeiffer TPH 240 IS turbomolecular pump.