spectrometer as well as other laboratory components hardware components 10 may include vacuum gauge controllers temperature probes power supply monitors cooling water flow meters and other key components a control computer 30 is linked to the mass spectrometer hardware components 10 and provides a control system for the operation of the mass spectrometer and may also include programs for the analysis of the results of experiments conducted on the mass spectrometer the hardware components 10 are linked to a overseer through an interface 20 that may include various custom designed combinations of analog to digital conversion hardware microprocessor firmware and computer memory to buffer in coming information the data bus structure employed for each hardware component can be optimized for the kind of signal to be generated and read in addition the control computer 30 provides status information concerning the instruments into the overseer the devices included in the hardware components 10 or the control computer 30 may send a real time interrupt signal software for the overseer can be implemented in a multi tasking environment to provide the real time surveillance the master process 50 represented by the dotted line box of the overseer initiates the parallel sub processes the polling data collection process 60 requests data from the hardware components 10 and the control computer 30 in the order established by the initial conditions or according to any new polling sequence set by the expert system process 70 or user operator.