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Starting and Running IRC using the the default configuration on green

The procedure outlined below assumes that the saved configuration has not been altered and inadvertently saved. The procedure uses the saved GUI values in all cases for initialization of the hardware. Unless a bad configuration is saved, using these values to initialize should be sufficient.

Procedure for initializing the crate and PCI cards from IRC

1. Turn on crate
2. ssh into green or vnc in
3. cd /export/home/green/irc/mustang2.6/mustang1/MarkIII/
4. run.sh
   • IRC splash screen and main window should be displayed
5. On IRC main screen go to Tools on the menu bar and open "component browser"
   • brings up dev exp like window

   Setting up the clock card

6. From the component browser, click on MarkIII Command (non scripted)
7. click on raw commands sub menu
   • INFO: now we have the hardware submenu
8. click on crate then clock card
9. click on clock divider
10. right click on clock divider and select Run command
11. click on Start and "run command"
    • INFO: the clock is set up and should be running
    • INFO: One should see the (fourth light from top) (wr_reg) light blink when a command is sent to the clock card. If this does not happen, you might want to check the address of the clock card or verify that the serial port booted properly.
    • INFO: Make sure you click 'Start' rather than 'Stop'! If not, the parser will not receive data even after you set up the DFBs (Note that the parser will not receive any data at this point if the crate was just powered up and the DFBs are not yet initialized).

    Setting up the DFBs

12. click on Digital Feed Back Card
13. click on Reset
14. right click and select Run command
15. click on setmode
16. right click and select run command
17. click on General
18. right click and select run command
19. click on Rowswitching1
20. right click and select run command
21. click on Rowswitching2
22. right click and select run command
    • INFO: At this point IRC should be parsing the data

23. click on Nsamp
24. right click and select run command
25. click on Settle
26. right click and select run command
27. click on Scale Factors
28. right click on scale factors and select run command

    If you plan on using the signal generator mode for testing, it must be configured and started.

29. click on Signal Generator
30. right click and select run command
31. click on Signal Generator
32. right click and select start command

Trouble in Paradise?

• MarkIII Command (unscripted) -> Clock -> clock divider = 2699
• MarkIII Command (unscripted) -> Digital Feedback Card -> General -> Stream Mode = Standard
• MarkIII Command (unscripted) -> Digital Feedback Card -> General -> Transfer Rate = 32
• MarkIII Command (unscripted) -> Digital Feedback Card -> RowSwitching1 -> LSync Divider = 300
• MarkIII Command (unscripted) -> Digital Feedback Card -> RowSwitching2 -> Nstep = 8
• Hardware Configuration -> Active Channels and Delay -> NISTCardChannelMask = 00000000 00001111
• Hardware Configuration -> Crate Cards -> DFB Cards -> DFB Card X -> NistChannelNumber = X ( DFBs are assigned to NISTCardChannelNumber in order, i.e. DFB 0=PCI channel 0 etc.

Developing our IRC code branch

Our IRC code source tree is a branch of IRC created May 06. Many changes have been made, but one huge addition in GB was the FITS Writer. To compare our branch with our revisions, one can simply check out the latest IRC in a different directory and diff the files. Here is a script for ssh'ing to the NASA repository. Get the password from somebody who knows it.

-- MelindaMello - 04 Sep 2007