The Oxford carbon-14 accelerator has operated with beam for approximately 400 hours. This report describes the progress made towards achieving dates from milligram samples with the required accuracy of better than two percent. Carbon-14 is detected relatively easily, but the overall beam optical system is, at present, rather sensitive to effects which prevent reliable maintenance of the necessary isotope ratio stability. These effects will be eliminated hopefully by careful attention to details of the design rather than by major modifications of the system. -- AATA