• interrobang@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    2·
    9 days ago

    I fix software on these things! No one ever quite gets what I do for work, it’s nice to run across in the wild.

    I feel seen lol

      • phdepressed@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        9 days ago

        Top left is a thermal cycler. Basically it heats and cools samples at a given rate. This is primarily used for generic PCR, and certain enzymatic reactions. Top right is the fancier version of this, it is for qPCR, so it can do the heating and cooling and has a laser/detector for the dye or probe that reacts to generating more dna with each PCR cycle so you can quantify approximately how much of the target DNA you had.

        Bottom right is a luminex. This uses detection of fluorophore signals to measure multiple analyates, usually different proteins.

        Idk what bottom left is.

          • Rednax@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            9 days ago

            Allow me to translate:

            Top left is a thermal cycler. Basically it heats and cools samples at a given rate. This is primarily used for magic. Top right is the fancier version of this, it is for qMagic, so it can do the heating and cooling and has a magic detector for magic components that reacts to magic happening so you can quantify approximately how much magic is going on in the beige box.

            Bottom right is a luminex. This uses detection of magic signals to measure magic.

            Bottom left is the beige box where magic happens.

  • fanbois [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    We had a bright orange magic box that was connected to a beige windows 95 box that you were never allowed to turn off because nobody knew if it would survive a reboot and there was no software for the orange box for a more modern setup. Almost felt an like arcane ritual, typing in the command lines to get it to work.

      • psud@aussie.zoneEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        My workplace was still using DOS machines (386s) in 2015 to format letters. It couldn’t be emulated as the critical component was an ISA card

        One of the pieces of work I worked on was diverting the data stream aimed at that letter system and translating it to go via our more modern correspondence system