PCI fibre card
Ordering
Users of the MCE Control Computer (MCC) should not need to order PCI fibre cards separately: they come pre-installed in the MCC. Retrofitting existing PCI fibre cards into new MCCs requires replacement of the fibre card front panel, which can be surprisingly tricky. If you already have fibre cards which you would like installed into your new MCC, please send them to UBC for retrofit (although it's less work for us if you just let us order them).
For non-MCC users, the data acquisition card is an ARC-64 - 250 MHz PCI Interface Board Rev. 5E (ask for a card from the batch of those set aside for UBC) from Astronomical Research Cameras, Inc:
Order the cards from:
Bob Leach San Diego State University Astronomical Research Cameras, Inc. 2247 San Diego Ave., Ste. 135 San Diego, CA 92110-2943 USA 1.619.278.0866 1.619.278.0868 fax leach at astro-cam.com
Power Consumption
Fibre-optic receiver/transmitter pairs consume non-negligible amounts of power. One of these cards consumes about 5 Watts. Our software doesn't check / can't tell when SRAM isn't present -- but in an otherwise working system you can easily just do a read/write test:
Making sure SRAMs are installed
In July 2019, we found out that some PCI cards shipped as early as 2018 were missing SRAM modules and needed to be shipped back to SDSU for repair. Our software doesn't check / can't tell when SRAM isn't present -- but in an otherwise working system you can easily just do a read/write test:
- When SRAM is installed and working:
dsp_cmd -qx write y 0x800 0x112233 dsp_cmd -qx read y 0x800 Line 0 : ok : Y[0x800] = 0x112233
- When SRAM is not installed:
dsp_cmd -qx write y 0x800 0x11 dsp_cmd -qx read y 0x800 Line 0 : ok : Y[0x800] = 0
