Zeiss DSM 962

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

Maximum acceleration voltage: 30kV

Spot size: 4nm @30kV, SEI

Manufacturing year: 1995 (?)

Detectors: SE, BSE, CL, sample current

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

1. Turn on the water chiller and make sure the valves are configured to run a water loop through Kevin (and not Kenji)
2. Plug in the main power connector to a power socket
3. Turn the key on the console to 'VAC', the system will start evacuating
4. If you were at atmosphere before evacuating, the evacuation will time out. Quickly press reset on the vacuum control panel before the system vents fully again. Evacuation will start up again.
5. Once the column reaches HV-capable pressure (marked on the bar graph with a piece of tape), an LED will illuminate on the control panel and you can turn on the rest of the system. Rotate the key to the 'ON' position. Watch out for bad hysteresis on the vacuum check, it might take a minute to stabilize.
6. Wait for the DOS software to boot.
7. Enable high voltage and filament.
8. The system should now be operational.

To vent the column (eg. to change samples or inspect/replace filament):

1. Press the VENT button on the vacuum control panel
2. Wait a surprisingly long time (until hissing is done)
3. Open chamber / gun, do your work, close it.
4. Press the EVAC button on the vacuum control panel.

The detector is currently not mounted, but you can try using the system for image acquisition.

1. Power on the Dell PC, wait for a boot to desktop
2. Start the 'NSS ohne drift' script from the desktop
3. Start the 'NSS' software from the desktop
4. Select an existing or create a new project
5. Ignore the warning about the detector being at high temperature (it's not, it's just disconnected)
6. Select 'microanalysis imaging' (IIRC?) from the mode on the left
7. Press play to do a live acquisition, press the gradient button to do a high quality acquisition

If everything goes well, the DSM will go into 'External Scan' mode and the acquisition will succeed. If the DSM goes into 'slow image scan' which can't be canceled, congratulations, you've hit The Bug Which We're Debugging.

1. Turn the key to the 'OFF' position. Most of the instrument will power off, the turbo will vent and brake. The column will remain at vacuum.
2. After the turbo spins down fully (listen to it by ear), disconnect the main power plug.
3. Turn off the water chiller once temperature is below 24 degrees Celsius.

The vacuum system looks like follows:

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

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.

A BlueSCSI v2 replaces the old Bernoulli Box SCSI device. It is available on the D: drive. When the SD card is ejected, the BlueSCSI v2 does not enumerate on SCSI anymore, so avoid accessing the D: drive then - otherwise you might have to reboot the machine to get it working again.

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.

We replaced the BIOS battery. In case it dies again, you will have to set the BIOS to defaults, then press F1 and change the Diskette drive-0 to 1.4 Mb Fix-disk drive-0 type to 29. Press F2 and let the device boot, some software will then reconfigure the rest of the BIOS accordingly.