THE NEW ALADDIN CONTROL-SYSTEM

The preliminary design of the new control system for the Aladdin electron-storage-ring light source was described at the Los Alamos workshop [Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A247 (1986) 100] and an updated report was given at the Villars conference [J.P. Stott and D.E. Eisert, CERN Yellow Report, to be published]. The new system is now almost completely installed and this paper is a final report on the project. The major features of the system are the following: • - commercial hardware is used throughout the computer, network and microcomputer systems; • - the operator consoles and the device-control microcomputers are linked by Ethernet; • - VAXstations with keyboard and track-ball input devices are used in the operator consoles; • - the microcomputers use 68000-based single-board computers and VMEbus backplanes; • - the main magnet power supplies contain intelligent controllers which are linked to a microcomputer by a multidrop serial link; • - the microcomputer software is developed on the VAXstations; it is downloaded into RAM and debugged over the Ethernet before being burned into EPROMs for operational use. This paper describes the design of the system, highlighting changes from the previous proposals, and discusses the aspects which allowed the control system of an operating facility to be rebuilt without requiring or causing any significant downtime. The performance of the new system and possible future improvements are also discussed. © 1990.