is wound and taken onto the storage reel 63 in the embodiment described thus the tape 10 can then be stored or immediately advanced to the detector station 90 described above in addition while the step of placing the reagents in the wells 12 before the dna is recited those of skill in the art will understand that the step of adding the dna may be performed prior to or after that of adding the reagents control of the system is effected by software the software is designed such that the movement of the pipetter pin array 42 dispenser 52 and detector 92 are indexed and in register with the wells 12 of the microwell tape 10 in a preferred embodiment the software also is capable of tracking the contents of the microwells and correlating the contents with the results of the fluorescence analysis in addition there is a software interface code for pc user intervention should additions or adjustments to the system be necessary in a further embodiment bar codes are added to the microwell tape denoting the contents of the wells such that the microwell tape or an individual well can be scanned to determine the results of the analysis using the system described rapid analysis of a large number of small volume samples may be effected in an exemplary version of the invention the samples will comprise a pcr reaction in which specific primers for genomic polymorphisms are used in a particularly favored embodiment there are three primers one primer is 5 u2032 to the polymorphic region and is not labeled the other two primers are 3 u2032 and within the polymorphic region and are specific for one of two variant alleles each of the specific primers is labeled.