I had a discussion with our users about our cell sorters and the topic of the AriaII came up. It was removed from our roaster in 2022 and I realized I never explained what happened.

Long story short, the AriaII was a victim of computer obsolescence. That sorter was purchased in 2009 and was running on Windows xp. At some point, last year, the actual motherboard got fried and we tried to find something else to run the Aria. I’ll try to explain the details here, but it’s a bit hazy in my mind. In essence, there was a compatibility issue with the AriaII video card and the modern motherboards we could find in our replacement computers . There just was no way to make one fit in the other! As a result, we could not get the feed from neither the droplet formation nor the side stream cameras. We tried to find super old computer running on xp still, but none of them would work properly.

By the way, that video is a gigantic thing that won’t fit in modern computers, which is why it requires its own little box outside of the computer. You can see one attached to the AriaIII if you’re curious. At any rate, the video card is no longer being manufactured, as I’ve been told.

The only option available was then to purchase a computer upgrade kit from BD. It’s essentially a $10K+ computer. Since the Aria will no longer be supported by BD starting in 2024, I was reluctant to proceed, but finally gave way thinking we’d have a 3-4 more years out of the instrument. But as it turned out, the kit was never available for the AriaII to begin with, and we just cancelled the order after a few months of waiting around. We had just finished rebuilding the AriaIII, there was no specific demand for a fourth cell sorter in the facility, so we just decided to cut our losses and pulled the plug in the end.

So this perfectly functional cell sorter was dismissed because we couldn’t connect a computer to it. It has been used for parts since – we just dodged a bullet when the AriaIII flow cart went haywire and we just plugged in the AriaII flow cart. But it’s a sad ending for that instrument. It’s stuck in a closet now.