PrimEx Shift Taker Operating Instructions

August 23-27, 2002
DAQ system To start the DAQ system from scratch
  1. From the primex account on clon10 run start_daq
  2. Once RunControl comes up, push connect
  3. Select the PRIMEX configuration. Make sure you select the one with all capital letters as the "primex" configuration will not write data to disk.
  4. Push Download
  5. Verify the trigger settings are correct in the trigConf window.
  6. When Download completes, push Prestart
  7. Wait for the prestart window to appear. Fill out the form and push OK
  8. Push Go
  9. When ready to end the run, push End
  10. Repeat the Prestart, Go, End sequence for additional runs.
Trigger Configuration The Trigger supervisor is configured via the trigConf program. To start trigConf run start_trigconf from the primex account on any clon machine. The window will appear on the clon03:0.1 display.

Trigger bits can be enabled and disabled from this window as well as prescale values set. Changes are only applied at prestart so editing the configuration during a run will not change the Trigger Settings for the run. You must select "Save" from the File menu for changes to be saved to the configuraion file.

The normal sequence is:

  1. Change setting in trigConf window.
  2. Select File->Save
  3. Prestart and Go

The triggers corresponding to the TS bits are:

  • bit 1 : HYCAL singles
  • bit 2 : PSMT
  • bit 3 : TAC
  • bit 4 : MOR (all T-counters)
  • bit 5 : MOR20 (top 20 T-counter only)
  • bit 6 : MORT2 (T-counter 2 only)
  • bit 7 : 10 kHz clock
  • bit 8 : LMS (Light Monitoring System)
  • bits 9-12 : unused
Event Display To start the PrimEx Event Viewer (PEV) run start_pev from the primex account on clon00. If no argument is passed, this will attach to the ET system by default to view online events. This can be run on clon10 if needed, but this uses resources which may slow down the DAQ system.

Press Next Event to see a single event.

Press Continuous events to display events continuously. (Hit stop to halt this).

Select the tab of the detector system of interest to view the detectors comprising it.

Monitoring Histograms Monitoring histograms are created by the program prim_monitor. Several instances of this can be run simultaneously, but they should be run on clon00 to avoid interfering with DAQ running on clon10. Here's the sequence:
  1. If it is not already running, start the et system on clon00 via start_primex_et while logged onto clon00 (ignore messages refering to clon10). You may want to remove the file /tmp/et_sys_primex before running this to delete any trace of a crashed ET system.
  2. If it is not already running, start the et2et server on clon10 via ~/programs/jun_02/et2et/et2et
  3. Start the prim_monitor program on clon00 via src/bin/SunOS/prim_monitor -GPRIM ET:primex This will create online histograms from the ET system and map them to the global section "PRIM". To view the histograms issue the global_sec PRIM command in PAW. The histograms are stored in different directories which for some reason or another, are not listed when the global section is mapped. Here are the names of the directories:
    • TAGGER
    • PS
    • TAC
    • HYCAL
    • DAQ

    "cd" into one of the above directories and you should then be able to list the histograms.

Note that prim_monitor can also be run on any file already on disk. The current raid disk is always pointed to by ~primex/raid. When running prim_monitor on a file, make sure you are not in the raid directory itself as the resulting hbook file will be created there and subsequently put on the tape silo. We also don't want paw.metafile and last.kumac files going there so don't run PAW from the raid disks.

Pedestal Runs Pedestal runs should be perfomed periodically (once per shift) to determine both the pedestals and the sparsification limits for the ADCs.

  1. Enable only trigger bit 7 using trigConf. Set the prescale to 10.
  2. Push Abort on the RunControl window.
  3. Push Configure
  4. Select PEDESTAL
  5. Push Prestart
  6. Push Go
  7. After 2 or 3 thousand events (2 or 3 seconds), end the run.
  8. The ROC will automatically create a file in /usr/local/clas/parms/pedman/archive the name primexroc1_primex_XXXXXX.ped where XXXXXX is the run number. There is a link in the same directory called primexroc1.ped which is a link pointing to the pedestal file to be used for sparsification. Remove this link and point it to the newly created file using

    ln -s primexroc1_primex_XXXXXX.ped primexroc1.ped

  9. Repeat the Abort, Configure, ... sequence only selecting PRIMEX as the configuration.
Prototype Stand MovementSimple command-line interface
Light Monitoring SystemSimple shift instructions (PostScript file)