On Thu, 10 June 2004, Darin Acosta wrote:
Adding to our Muon "slice test", the RPC RE1/2 chamber was successfully installed onto the ME1/2 chamber today (see picture). Gas and HV will be set up on Friday afternoon, as will the trigger electronics hopefully.
The peripheral crate electronics are now distributed across two peripheral crates, with ME1/1 and ME1/2 going to one crate, and ME2/2 and ME3/2 going to the second. In the first crate, Martin successfully installed the backplane with the connectors for the RAT transition card (RPC and ALCT interface card). See picture above. Moreover, and important for its implication on the unpacking software, Martin installed new firmware by UCLA for the TMB that adds RPC information to the DAQ output. Updated documentation on the TMB is here.
We are now distributing the TTCmi clock to all crates. The TTCRq and the PLL on the Sector Processor lock to it!
On Fri, 11 June 2004, Darin Acosta wrote:
Here are some general goals for the 25 ns run that begins Monday:
On Fri, 11 June 2004, Darin Acosta wrote:
The Warsaw group began installing Link Board electronics and cables today (see photo). Currently the first Link Board prototype is what is installed, although for TMB-Link Board tests we will need the second prototype.
On Fri, 11 June 2004, Darin Acosta wrote:
We got this message regarding a West Area Evacuation Exercise schedule for next Friday:
Dear all,
Thanks in advance !
Michael JECKEL Tel.:16-4710
On Tues, 15 June 2004, Darin Acosta wrote:
A hacker took out many accounts and computers at UF (and elsewhere). Among the ramifications were that Darin lost e-mail access for a while, and that the Testbeam web page was down. Both are back currently.
Structured beam started yesterday around 6pm! A check on the scope shows that the L1A and clock are synchronized to each other. Data was seen in the Track-Finder, and tracks were logged. Additionally, we got an L1A signal out from the Track-Finder, but not yet injected into the system.
We are running with 2 peripheral crates and all 4 chambers, something new. We also have the RPC-ALCT interface card(RAT), and RPC signals have been seen in the TMB. Synchronization of the RPC and CSC data is next.
On Wed, 16 June 2004, Darin Acosta wrote:
We had a very successful day today. First, we were successful in getting an L1A out of the Track-Finder crate and sending it in to trigger the experiment independent of the scintillator trigger. This is with two separate MPC cards from two peripheral crates feeding the Track-Finder. Since the trigger latency is obviously longer than the scintillator, we took out a 67 BX delay and collected what appears to be good data in run 293. The Track-Finder is now the default trigger for all runs since this run. We now see the whole profile of the beam, which is a little larger than the 12 cm square scintillator paddles. In fact, the trigger rate increased two times to 17,500/spill for muons. The bottom left yellow LED on the SP (top right picture) indicates tracks are found by the SP. The top left picture shows the 2 peripheral crates now in the system, and the RPC Link Board crate just below the second peripheral crate in the background.
Next we switched to the radiation tolerant, discrete logic mode of the CCB (timing module). This doesn't have the L1A delay anymore, so we have to time in the L1A signal from the SP with NIM logic delays. This new mode of the CCB, a major point of this summer's beam test, seems to be working. We are only fine-tuning the delay settings for the electronics to improve the chamber efficiency. (But if it was bad, we wouldn't have L1A from the CSC TF).
We also sent the L1 muons found by the SP to the Muon Sorter, and verified readback of the winner bits in the SP DAQ output! So we have tested the entire electronic chain available to us: CSC all the way to the input of the Global Muon Trigger (i.e. output of Muon Sorter).
A heroic effort by Alex Tumanov and Rick Wilkinson allows us to unpack new data (with a new TMB data format for RPC data) successfully as well. Also, Mike Case delivered a beam test geometry, which will eventually allow us to simulate our setup.
Some DAQ bandwidth numbers: with the Track-Finder trigger we are currently getting 17,500 muons/spill. This gives 1.5 GB for 10 spills (60MB/s during spill). Our event size is 9 kB, which is in good agreement with our expectations for CMS as well since a muon should go through 4 chambers (what we have at the beam test).
We lose the muon beam at midnight tonight, since tracker now wants pions.
On Fri, 18 June 2004, Darin Acosta wrote:
I gave a status report of the CSC beam test at the USCMS weekly meeting tonight, along with Pawel deBarbaro for the HCAL tests at H2. People can find out the latest from those slides.
Tonight we rotated ME3/2 (the last chamber) about its axis by one notch, which is 22.5 degrees. This emulates a phi bend angle, and causes di-strip patterns to be used more frequently in the CLCT. Effect takes place for runs 338 and after.
On Sat, 19 June 2004, Darin Acosta wrote:
Tonight another milestone was reached, as the CSC and RPC systems ran together and logged synchronized data. The trigger source was the CSC Track-Finder, and the timing to the RPC Link boards was adjusted so that RPC data was seen in time with the CSC trigger with high efficiency. A quick check of the BXN shows agreement with the DDU BXN, although more thorough checks should be performed.
We are currently having "fun" tuning the TTCvi. It seems that our BC0 signal varies +- 1 BX occasionally.
On Sat, 19 June 2004, Frank Geurts wrote:
More than 1M events taken in a single continuous run with the eventbuilder (4CSCs + 1RPC, ddu data only) good for 12 Gb taken in little more than 20minutes, automatically divided into 50k event files.
It doesn't have an official run number but I will try to keep this long run.
cheers,
Frank
btw. the only reason for stopping the run was to continue shared running with the SP ... the eventbuilder seemed to be perfectly happy adding another million evebt :)
On Sun, 20 June 2004, Darin Acosta wrote:
We took a lot of data today, and even installed iron absorber as shown above.
On Thu, 24 June 2004, Darin Acosta wrote:
Everything was boxed up to be shipped home or stored at ISR on Monday. A well-deserved end of run party took place that afternoon at the Prevessin site, as you can see above. This location is appropriate because it appears that this will be our next stop. With the RPC test out of the way, we are free to try a "slice test" with HCAL at the H2 beamline in late September. Hence, we left some equipment at CERN for future beam tests.
For the moment, however, everyone should catch up on some sleep!
For those of you all rested, a copy of the logbook and and a description of the runs taken with the trackfiner are available online from the main web site: