the day is ending

And my search for any reference on how the SEM PMTs work on a specific level has failed.

I'm pissed. No wonder people can't discuss it rationally. There's no data. All freaking proprietary.

I want to beable to discuss the discrete levels that we can get. - to talk about 8-bit's failings and the problems with raw data collection and manipulation of images... i've heard rumors of hardware being 12 bit coded... the video boards generally are 16 bit anyway but often files are only saved in 8 bit but if the data is 12 bit... its a mess.

The biggest mess are the images that wind up from poor collection parameters. makes me grumbly. And by searching, first i did the whole skim of all SEM texts i have here, old school. Index, page numbers, read... One decent book with fantastic equations and explainations i hadn't run across (which will be helpful) but nothing really that i could use. The net was worse. Much worse. And it is terribly frustrating. Is the ADC (analog - digital - converter) on the PMT 8 bit? and then does it hit a DAC before the video out? What is that? how do the 8 bit data points get smoothed back into an analog signal?

I'm stuck and i figured i'd vent here and start the thought process before i bombard the microscope geek list....

and on a cycling note.. Check out her! Next Graham Watson, no? Cool Shots. Nice blog web log...

i gotta stop finding cycling blogs to read... what am i up to now? a bazillion? at least a gwadzillion... (oh i crack myself up)

Couple more PMT (which is photo-multiplier tube btw) focused things to look at before blasting out on the trailer machine... its 62°F out there... i'm gonna fry - too hot... too hot for jeans and this shirt...