I just wondered how you were getting on Isil - did you get what you needed? At the end of June I really thought e-bay was the answer to all my problems, but the piece of equipment I bought has stopped working (probably because it was so old) and now I'm back to square one. I also had a closer look at the equipment grant I mentioned and found something subtle in the regulations that I think excludes students from applying.

Ooops, I just pushed your message off the bottom of the top 40...

Hello again Sue. I haven't been checking the forum for a while. Thank you for your kind message. I thought I convinced my University in the end to buy me the device, but no news for the last 2 months. I'm really sorry to hear about your experience with Ebay. I had a problem with something I bought last month, and managed to get my money back from PayPal. Can you try that? You are right about that equipment grant(s). The ones I found also exclude students.

Why don't you try getting your supervisor to appply for it or is there a lab budget for such things? Surely if you can justify the equipment I would have thought the dept would help you buy it. Good luck.

Good to hear from you again Isil - even though you're still stuck. I don't think I can get my e-bay money back - no-one sells what I bought as 'guaranteed working' because they're difficult to test unless you are actually in a lab. Everyone advises me not to buy one without a manual etc, but I don't have any choice! I've ordered another from e-bay, and if this one fails I've got some really desperate options like building a really basic one myself or making a software version! Dragonfly: there SHOULD be

a budget for equipment, but in both our cases there isn't - that's the problem. It's also really hard to approach the department as a student and be taken seriously - you have no chance without supervisor support (but I'll work on it). The grant I was talking about (which looked really hopeful at first) completely excludes students (not sure why) - it says something like the money my supervisor applies for must not be used for a student's research! Crazy!