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Next meeting in February/amended December minutes



     Folks,

A good new year to you all.  We won't be having a Beamline Controls meeting
in January; the next meeting is tentatively set for February 13th, after the
TWG meeting.  If you have suggestions for the agenda, please notify
Mark Rivers (rivers@cars3.uchicago.edu)

A number of you sent corrections to the minutes of the last meeting.  In an
effort to get it right, I present the amended:


             Minutes of the December 5 Beamline Controls meeting

EPICS Collaboration meeting report
  Harvey Rarback
    - distributed notes on the mailing list
    - highlights:
        Jeff Hill and Jim Kowalkowski are working on a portable channel access
          server.
        EPICS channel access support for large arrays is a high priority.
    - reminds CATS that it is to our advantage to participate in the
        Collaboration

  Jim Kowalkowski
   - will build cdev in the next few months
   - Bob Daley is building cdev on HP and SGI
   - Marty Kraimer plans an ezca interface to cdev
   - Sparcworks has C++ for Solaris

CAT updates
  UNICAT (Pete Jemian)
    - wants Software Exchange to keep current on EPICS releases
        latest release on SX is R3.12Beta8
        some new code is in base now (e.g. device support for AVME 9440 board)
        easier to keep current now before users become dependent on old release
    - wants latest stable version of Tcl/TK (currently 7.4/4.0) used for clients
    - wants EPICS X-based tools not to be locked in to X11/R5 as X11/R6 exists
    - uses MVME 162-042 for ioc's.  In config/CONFIG_SITE, adjust the line to be
        BUILD_ARCHS=$(HOST_ARCH) mv167 mv162
    - wants to save CATs money by either:
	having precompiled binaries for Solaris 2.x available, or
        allowing CATs to buy into an APS sitewide license for the Solaris acc
    - wants APS to obtain a sitewide IDL license which CATs could buy into
    - has had trouble with some OMS VME58-8 cards -- latest working version of
        firmware is 1.8
    - would like support for OMS VME58-8s, a DC servo controller card, if PMAC
        support (from SBC CAT) does not work out
    - developing GPIB device support for the Keithley 428 current amplifier
    - developed record support for the Acromag AVME 9440-i-L DIO card; device
        support had been developed by Greg Nawrocki
    - would like a short course on Solaris system administration
    - would like XFD to distribute a standard tar'ed up release of EPICS for
        SunOS and Solaris
    - would like the APS to provide a SysAdmin to help with the thornier parts
        of Sun system administration
    - lead a discussion of having the APS help the CATs with a common
        configuration for Sun platforms, using the experience gained by the APS 
        shift to Solaris
  Beamline Controls and Data Acquisition Group (Tim Mooney)
    - Tim's group supports all of SRI (except some of sector 2) but is part of
        XFD, *not* SRI CAT.
    - pointed out that the BCDA group didn't staff up to handle EPICS
        application development and system/network administration for the CATs.
        If the CATs want the group to do these things, they should make their
        wishes know to either the BCC, or through their CAT directors.
    - 3 or 4 SRI CAT beamlines plan to take beam around December 12
    - developed support for the Stanford Research 570 current amplifiers
    - CATs planning to buy the Nova V/F converters should get their orders in
    - using a temporary dual-ported ioc to get beam current, ID gap, BPM
    - supporting latest version of SCAN record in R3.12.0
        highlights: 15 detectors, buffered arrays, better support for on-the-fly scanning, pre- and post-scan
        links, relative and absolute scans, dry-run scans, and time-series
        data. Details in EPICS R3.12.2 Release Notes (on the Web).  SRI
        beamlines are not yet using R3.12.2.
    - 50 OMS VME58 transition boards due soon; will probably have to order
        another 50
    - needs stringIO record for HideOS serial device support
    - supports Lakeshore temperature controller and Huber DMC
  BESSRC (Guy Jennings)
    - converted to HDF 4.0
    - using channel access on the Macintosh
    - working on a ca interface to Visual Basic
    - their stuff available for anonymous ftp from their home page
  DND (John Quintana)
    - implemented a PLC on their x-ray generator used at the APS.  Its status is
        accessible from their home page
    - using channel access under Linux
    - using MicroMo DC linear servo amplifiers and MicroMo motors with Industry
        Pack controllers
    - using CVS for many tasks, including drawings management
    - will bring a Nova V/F to Daresbury to check out soon
    - expects to take beam before Christmas
  SBC (Tom Coleman)
    - recently demonstrated 20 MB/s throughput from VME to an SGI box over a
        HPPI interface, limited by speed of memory board.  Also sustained 30
        MB/s to a RAID array.
  IMCA (Bill Lavender)
    - ordering a CCD detector in January
  CARS (Mark Rivers)
    - has an HDF browser written in IDL
    - is planning to benchmark ezca and Lca
    - reported on a high speed video link between the University of Chicago and
        the CARS LOM which was used recently at a CARS meeting.  The link used
        FDDI at the two ends and a recently installed ATM network between the
        University and ANL.

File formats
  Jon Tischler
    recently attended a neutron scattering meeting where they are agreeing on a
    standard, which is an implementation of HDF.  There is a Tcl/TK browser
    written at NIST.  Will be used at ILL as a data transfer standard.
  Andy Howard
    reported on the crystallography community's experience with file formats.
    First there was CIF, an ASCII format with standard hierarchical definitions.
    Then the macromolecular community extended the standard with mmCIF which
    took 6 years longer than expected and is still not finished!  To add image
    (binary) data to the standard they are talking about imageCIF which is
    proposed to be an ASCII header with binary data.  Andy Hammersly (ESRF) is
    spearheading the effort to develop this 'standard'.  Those of us who think
    an implementation of HDF makes more sense should think about getting on the
    mailing list.  More information about the group considering this standard
    will soon be available on this list.

ezca/ezcaIDL
  Tim Mooney/Mark Rivers/Marty Kraimer
    discussed some changes that need to be made to ezca to increase its
    functionality.  Marty has no time to work on these immediately but plans a
    rewrite of ezca in a few months.  Meanwhile the hooks in to raw ca provided
    by ezca will be used in ezcaIDL.  Ben-chin Cha has written an interim 
    library, called Ezca, to supplement the ezca library with the routines that
    were required to port the data catcher to ezcaIDL.

Application server for channel access
  Ned Arnold
    reported on an idea to use Jim's PV gateway as a means to serve process
    variables from workstation applications.  Jim will write a new library that
    can add and delete PVs from the new portable channel access server.
  
New hardware
  Mark Rivers
    distributed preliminary specs for an MCA, consisting of a VME histogrammer
    and ADC, to be built by Hytec if there is enough interest to make the price
    reasonable.  If interested, contact him.
  Tom Coleman
    developing support for DC servos with the PMAX motor controller.  The
    amplifiers are pulsewidth modulated and haven't been tested for noise near
    senitive detectors.
  The group
     discussed some new electronics for solid state detectors which can improve
     resolution and/or throughput.  Canberra has a new line of higher
     performance conventional preamps and amplifiers.  Both Daresbury and Bill
     Warburton's company have designs for amplifiers and ADC's which use DSP
     technology to get the optimal information from the preamp pulse.  There is
     much interest in checking out these designs.