One of the major difficulties with the older DEC PDP-11 based EDS systems is that they were designed as standalone units. Their manufacturers believed that the systems were capable of performing all the spectral processing that the users would ever need, and therefore did not allow for transfer of data to other computer systems. While some of the vendors have attempted to offer file transfer capabilities as upgrades, typically these upgrades are based on a serial connection using a file transfer program like Kermit. Although such solutions are acceptable for the transfer of small numbers of spectra, they cannot seriously handle hundreds of spectra or digital images data without tying up the EDS computer for extended periods of time. In multi-user environments, it is often desirable to move the data taken in one users microscope session immediately, to avoid filling to capacity the disk space on the acquisition system and rendering the system unusable for the next user.