This is a Thermo-Fisher (thermo-electron?) Kevex, PXS5-928 sealed portable x-ray source. 

It's a box. Like its older, black, analog PXS5-925 counterpart that used to be produced by kevex and is what machine number 1 runs, into one end you plug power and interlock controls, and out the other end, x-rays come out. The form factor is almost identical, with the blue shell being the biggest clue that it's the newer model. The other, big clue that it's a newer model, is the DB9 plug where you control the source via serial RS-232. With swanky digital firmware-controlled operation and intelligent conditioning protocols to prolong the life of the tube, this source steps right out of the future! 

I HATE THE FUTURE!!! 

I HATE DIGITAL!

I HATE FIRMWARE!

I hate forcing you to condition a source up to max power once a day, when you only want to run it at a lower power every so often! 

And I REALLY hate MYSELF for mucking around, trying to find a hack to get around said conditioning forcing, resulting in 6 weeks of really mucking around to try and unbork a source after giving it brain damage. On the other hand, slightly because of this, I did make a new friend. 

This story starts in... late... november...

Riding high off my temporary shoddy wiring job to power and deal with interlocks, 

I was exploring that swanky serial interface. The machine echos every letter you type, and then if the command is understood, like "hello", "help", or "x-ray on", the machine gives you some information and/or executes an operation, if such an operation is allowed. So far so good. 

(you'll see a lot of pictures of my screen in these posts, by the way). 

If it was up to me, I'd like to avoid having to condition on "their terms" altogether; this is america and I should be allowed to blow up my own tube if I would like to. Which I generally don't. Which is WHY I'd like the control to not force it to go up to max voltage if I don't plan on running it there during normal operation, argh, but anyway, when I ran this conditioning program nothing would happen! It would say "conditioning started" and then would yield a countdown timer, but x-rays would stay off by multiple metrics. 

First, I figured out that my power supply was inadequate, so I replaced that. Not too bad. 

Then, I figured out that, for whatever reason, you would have to explicitly tell it "x-rays on", even after you told it you were going to condition. OK. Weird behavior, just something you have to learn about I guess. 

THEN, I explored the behavior of the tube turning off within five seconds of you telling to go x-rays on... eventually realizing that, you had to poll this machine's state or tell it to do something (even a bogus command like blibblebloop) every 5 seconds or less or it would shut off. Throughout the entire conditioning procedure, and presumably during normal x-ray operation. 

I did actually write a foolish macro to do this throughout an entire conditioning cycle, and got x-rays, which is great. This is how I imaged my banana, as eluded to in my previous post. Woohoo. The problem is that I didn't know how great I had it, and wanted MORE, and had the foolishness of trying to disable the timeoff or conditioning settings. Culminating in... guessing the password to go into manufacturer's mode. 

Password is. KEVEX! I had never felt like such a hacker. Jubilations all around. I was able to access all sorts of cool diagnostics, like the focus and grid voltages, and the ability to set the system into "generic" mode, which is something that I did 

I set the system into generic mode

I set the system into generic mode. 

This is something that I did. 

I will repeat this: There was a new option to "set system generic", and with the idea that maybe something was funny about MY system specifically, I decided this command would be a good idea to type in, and I typed it in, and the system reset and all of a sudden the source thought it was a PXS-10, which is a different model of source entirely but which apparently shares at least some of the electronic controls. 

Cannot start! No interlock! Why? It thinks the supply (and interlock) voltage is too low -- 8.8 instead of the 12 I was feeding it. why again? presumably different ADC settings on the different models. What else? Maximum safe KV and microamps raised from 90 and 150 to 130 to 280, respectively. Cool, except it will probably blow up at these settings, and the conditioning program forces you to warm up to maximum settings, and I CAN'T RUN IT BECAUSE IT THINKS THERE'S NO INTERLOCK! 

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The story has a happy ending... kind of, but my laptop is running out of battery. Next time, I'll tell you how the source got fixed. Partially with the help of this guy (the new friend) and his introducing me to avocado toast.