Contact

Dr. Roland Beyer

Beam line scientist, radiation protection officer FWK
Nuclear Physics
roland.beyer@hzdr.de
Phone: +49 351 260 3281

Data Acquisition Manual: How to run Neutron Time of Flight Measurements at nELBE (Up to July 2011)

(old version up to June 2010, latest version)

- Transmission Experiment -

The transmission experiment are done with the same electronics setup like the inelastic scattering experiments, with the difference that the electronics for the BaF2 data is ignored.

To run neutron time of flight measurement you first have to do some preparations:

1. switch on the electronics  
2. start MBS prompter  
  login to RIO7: telnet rio7
user name: ntofdaq
password: ***********
  remove interrupt request settings vmeconfig -c
  go to working directory cd ~/mbsrun/ntot/
  start prompter prm
  intitialize MBS @start
3. setup initialisation files (if you want to do some special settings)  
  login to urania (in another terminal window) ssh -X ntofdaq@urania
password: ***********
  go to working directory cd mbsrun/ntot
  open setup_vme_0_short.ini for text editing xemacs setup_vme_0_short.ini &
  open setup_vme_1_short.ini for text editing xemacs setup_vme_1_short.ini &
4. open log files for monitoring  
  login to urania (in another terminal window) ssh -X ntofdaq@urania
password: ***********
  go to working directory cd mbsrun/ntot
  open mbslog.l, mbsprint_vme_0.l and mbsprint_vme_1.l(each in its own terminal window) tail -f mbslog.l
tail -f mbsprint_vme_0.l
tail -f mbsprint_vme_1.l
5. run the automatic setup of the V874B TAPS Modules (only if you want to use the QDC data)  
  (see here)  
6. switch on the detectors  
  login to fwk24 (HV control PC)
turn on the detectors you want to use (cf. cabeling scheme)
rdesktop -g 1240x900 -a 16 -k de fwk24
start isegCANHVControl via desktop shortcut
7. start the process to take the list mode data  
  login to zirkonia
go to directory for list mode data files
start RFIO dispatcher
ssh -X ntofdaq@zirkonia
cd /hdd1/ntofdaq/lmd/
rawDispRFIO
8. start the OPC client  
  login to rio6
go to working directory
start OPC readout
telnet rio6
cd mbsrun/ntot
./opc2shm


Now the measurement can be started. This has to be done in the MBS prompter (prm):

1. open list mode file open file size=900 -auto -rfiodisk
if it is the first file enter:
open file zirkonia:filename_.lmd first=1 size=900 -auto -rfiodisk
2. start acquisition rio3::sta acq
3. wait ...
4. stop acquisition rio3::stop acq
5. close list mode file close file
6. note down the values of the live and dead time given at the end of mbsprint_vme_0.l

Step 1 and 2 can also be executed with the command @startrun

Step 4 and 5 can also be executed with the command @stoprun

If an error that freezes the data acquisition appears, do the following:

1. leave MBS prompter CTRL+C
2. reset RIOs resa (2x)
3. wait until reset is done -> no more network processes with rio3 and rio6 should show up netstat
4. restart MBS prompter prm