I never really cared or thought about how old our FACScan is oddly enough
until yesterday after a conversation with someone at BD when the issue of age
come up coincidentally. Our scan still does exquisite immunofluorescense and
DNA content but it has been under service contract as the hospital's machine
for the last eight years. The service agreement covers parts and when pieces
or hardware (emphasis on hardware)break they are replaced with new "revs". To
me this means I just have an old cover. One issue I can think of then is if
one wanted to interface a non-modified, old facscan with the newer MAC
hardware for data acquisition. We have just done this with no apparent
problems but I understand that there have been some.