Ask a CT Engineer: Aquilion 8 GCIFA Failure

Our 24/7 Technical Support team helps our customers by answering their call when they need us most. Through our “Ask a CT Engineer” blog series, we share questions we’ve received from engineers in the field answered by our very own expert engineering team. Here is an inside look at a recent question about an Aquilion* 8 error:

Question: I am working on an Aquilion 8 CT Scanner. After bootup, I can run a warm-up but when I go to run the daily QA phantom the “Abort” button light comes on for a second then goes out and the error pops up. No errors found on RTM or Fiber Channel tests. Only GCIFA failure when running the hwtest through the console. The error seems to clear after manually resetting the board and then running the diagnostic hwtest on the console again. Once those tests pass, the scanner will usually run fine until the next time I boot it up. I believe the issue is with the GCIFA-D board part number: PX74-06056. Can you confirm this is the issue?

Answer: The customer had already checked the RTM rack for errors and found no indications of errors. During the hwtest on the console, the GCIFA-D exerciser would fail. Additionally, the D1 LED on the GCIFA-D board was blinking, indicating an Abnormal Hardware condition on the GCIFA-D board and/or communication with the console. The error could be cleared by pressing the SW1 Reset switch on the GCIFA-D board and the scanner would resume normal operation. The conclusion was that there was a communication problem between the GCIFA-D board and the console during boot-up and testing. The customer had already sourced the part number for the GCIFA-D board and wanted to verify the part number. Both the GCIFA-D and GCIFA board were ordered and installed to resolve the issue.

Richardson Healthcare can help address challenges with defective GCIFA boards and more. Our 24/7 Parts and Technical Support team is available and ready for your call – (704) 739-3597.

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