Basic mce script configuration

This is intended as a sort of quick start guide, picking up after the various installation steps to see if the system is ready for use. The next step after this basic configuration is to try to set up a series array.

Check your configuration

System configuration

Is your environment set up? Check that $MAS_ROOT is defined in your shell:

echo $MAS_ROOT
/usr/mce/mce_script

Is your data folder set up correctly? Make sure

/data/cryo/

exists, and that your user can create directories there. Then try running

set_directory

The only acceptable complaint is "There is already a config_mce_auto_setup file in this directory". Any other complaint should be addressed.

• If it complains about "array_id" not existing or being empty, just run

echo default > /data/cryo/array_id

Hardware configuration

To check that your MCE works, and that mce.cfg is ok, run:

 mce_status -s | grep fw_rev

You should see something like:

cc fw_rev : 0x5000002
rc1 fw_rev : 0x5000002
rc2 fw_rev : 0x5000002
bc1 fw_rev : 0x5000000
bc2 fw_rev : 0x5000000
bc3 fw_rev : 0x5000000
ac fw_rev : 0x5000004

The output will depend on your MCE and firmware revisions. But if anything returns "0" or ERROR, that should be resolved before continuing.

mce_script configuration

The experiment.cfg file is used by auto_setup and the Mce config template system. There are a couple of basic parameters that must be consistent with your mce.cfg file. The ones that lead to the most problems are:

hardware_rc = [1, 1, 1, 1];
hardware_rc_data = [1, 1, 1, 1];
config_rc = [1, 1, 1, 1];

These should be changed to reflect the RCs in use on your system. E.g. if only RC2 is installed on your system, change all three of these variables to [0, 1, 0, 0].

For users running fast SQ2 switching, you should also set "hardware_fast_sq2" to 1 or 2 instead of the default of 0. (Really this will only be a show-stopper if you are using a "biasing address card" in the BC2 slot.)

You may, at this point, also want to tell the system your basic multiplexing parameters. This is accomplished through the settings:

default_num_rows = 33;

And later:

row_len = 100;
num_rows = 33;
num_rows_reported = 33;

All three of these "num_rows" parameters should be set to the same value. If you don't have any Squid-1s, that's fine. You can leave num_rows at 33.

After editing your main copy of experiment.cfg (which lives in $MAS_CONFIG, or possibly in $MAS_TEMPLATE), check that the system likes it by running:

rm $MAS_DATA/experiment.cfg   # remove the active copy
set_directory                 # update the active copy from the main copy
mce_reconfig                  # attempt basic configuration of the MCE

If mce_reconfig succeeds, you're probably ready to start looking at SQUIDs. This step will also put your MCE into a state where you should be able to read noise data from the ADCs. E.g. try running

mce_run test_data 100 s

That should acquire 100 frames of data into the file "test_data".