ACC Status Update

1. ACC Status Update 7/10/2017 John Podczerwinski, Horatio Li

2. What We’ve Done So Far We’ve spent some time studying Eric Oberla’s old central card firmware. We found and compiled his ACDC DAQ software (some debugging required). We downloaded Mircea’s VME firmware, and flashed it onto the ACC. We then used a VME crate to do some simple things like turn an LED on and off, and read/write registers on the ACC. We have also spent some time studying Mircea’s firmware.

3. What We Know We know how to tell the ACC to do simple things through a VME crate. We know a bit about the hardware trigger and USB block from the old central card firmware. Eric Oberla has written firmware that should allow for the ACC to be talked to through USB. The ACC we are in possession of has a 25MHz clock rather than a 40MHz clock. Eric Oberla is making an adjustment to the ACDC firmware to adapt to this. The ACC USB firmware and the old central card appear to be very similar, so Eric Oberla’s ACDC DAQ software might also be useful for reading out the ACC. We can’t operate the ACDC without some sort of central card.

4. What We Don’t Know We are still unsure about the meaning of some of the signals in Eric Oberla’s central card firmware. We haven’t been able to map functionalities from Matt Wetstein’s list to the central card firmware. We are still trying to understand Mircea’s VME firmware. We don’t yet understand the VME software provided by Mircea, or the ACDC DAQ software from Eric’s github.

5. Goals Short Term: Map elements from Matt’s functionality list to the central card firmware. Gain a better understanding of the VME firmware and software. Gain a better understanding of the ACDC DAQ software. Long Term: Once Eric edits the ACC USB firmware, we’ll try to read out some pulses through USB (i.e. to apply the functionalities from Matt’s list). Add a VME block to Eric Oberla’s ACC USB firmware, and eventually read pulses via VME. Test PSEC4A if it arrives.