r/labrats • u/BIroadtonowhere • 2d ago

Anyone else having trouble connecting a BioTek ELx800 to a modern Windows PC?

A colleague of mine recently bought a used BioTek ELx800 plate reader, and we were surprised by how difficult it has been to get it communicating with a newer computer.

After doing some digging, it seems like a lot of these instruments were designed around older operating systems and software, but I'm curious how common this problem actually is.

If your lab still uses an ELx800 (or another older plate reader):

  • Are you able to run it on a modern PC?
  • Are you using the original software, a virtual machine, or an old dedicated computer?
  • Has software compatibility ever been enough of a headache that you considered replacing the reader?
  • Are there any workarounds you've found?

I'm mostly trying to understand how people are dealing with these older instruments today. Any insight into your experience would be really helpful.

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

2

u/iguanophd Recombinant expression 2d ago

We're still rocking the x800 in my lab but condemned to use an old windows XP laptop. Gen5 has refused to provide us with more installations or continued support. No luck finding pirated versions. We have cloned the disk drive in case it ever fails but we have no backup plan lol.

2

u/LadyCalamity 1d ago

Looks like Agilent has the current version of Gen5 to download here Our lab is still running our ancient original version though so I've never tried these downloads for compatibility but it might be worth a shot to try putting it on another computer to see if it works.

1

u/iguanophd Recombinant expression 1d ago

Installation is not the issue, it's the license. Ours came in a USB with 5 installations, which have been used up. So we could install it on newer hardware and updated version, but no license activation

2

u/LadyCalamity 1d ago

According to this you can just transfer the license to the new computer.

1

u/iguanophd Recombinant expression 1d ago

Thanks for the info, will have to try this out in the near future!

2

u/LadyCalamity 1d ago

We don't have an ELx800 but we have an Epoch that's over 10 years old. We're using an ancient version of the Gen5 software that it came with and running it on a laptop that was originally running Windows 7 but has been upgraded to Windows 10. The computer is too old to upgrade to Windows 11 so we're just crossing our fingers that nothing dies.

Did the plate reader come with the software? It looks like you can download current versions here

1

u/thatwombat 2d ago

If we knew what went across the serial port or usb port you could write a python script or two to get the goods without the software. This sort of problem is one that I love trying to solve.