Page under constructionPage under constructionIn understanding the description below, it is important to be aware that the current structure of the system is influenced by "historical" aspects, since it has been under constant development and bit-by-bit renewal since the lab was opened in 1979. At that time, we only had a couple of CAMAC crates and a NORD 10 computer for both data acquisition and analysis.
The oldest acquisition devices still in use are the Silena (NIM) ADCs. They were originally interfaced to CAMAC and the obsoleted NORD computer.
The next stage was the VME system, with VME-ADC interfaces taking over the Silena (NIM) ADCs. The VME crate master (front-end processor) was the FIC8230.
Then came the CAMAC ADCs, TDCs and discriminators.
The Sun SparcStation for rear-end processing was installed in 1992, and the Bit3 host interface (VME - SBus), providing a 25MB/s, 16 bit wide data-path followed shortly.
The most recent part of the system is related to the SIRI detector. This includes replacing the old VME crate master with a PowerPC module. A more detailed block diagram of the SIRI part of the system is shown here. Development / testing is still in progress.
The new PowerPC crate master is based on LynxOS, with front-end acquisition programs written in Fortran and C. This part of the system is still under development, and the intention is for it to replace the former.
At the rear-end (Sun SparcStation), new graphic oriented (X-windows / Motif) acquisition (SIRIUS) and data analysing tools (MAMA) have been developed. The latter employs the Radware software package. The source languages are Fortran and C.
