Actually, Athena can open binary SSRL files--I just successfully opened one of Lia's files in Athena.

Here's what I did: 

Under Settings, choose Plugin registry.
Check the SSRLB box.

From there, it opened fine.

Does trying that work for you, Lia?

I am using Athena 0.8.061 on a Mac running OS 10.5.8.

--Scott Calvin
Sarah Lawrence College

On Jul 7, 2011, at 6:20 PM, Wayne W Lukens Jr wrote:

Hi Lia,

Those are binary files from SSRL, which athena cannot open. There are a few ways that you can deal these files.

Easiest is to use Six-Pack to work up the data. I believe it will open SSRL binary files. Six-Pack is a GUI-driven suite of programs analogous to Athena and Artemis.

Slightly less easy is to convert your binary data to ascii data, which can be done on the SSRL computer that you used to collect the data. At this point, you will have to ask the beamline scientist to do this for you. You can definitely open the ascii files in Six-Pack.

Somewhat more difficult is to use EXAFSPAK to work up the data. These are a suite of programs for EXAFS data analysis that are not particularly easy to learn. They will open the binary files.
EXAFSPAK is easy to use once you have learned the commands.

Six-Pack:

http://home.comcast.net/~sam_webb/sixpack.html

EXAFSPAK:

http://ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/exafspak.html

Sincerely,

Wayne