STAR Trigger Operation Manual for STAR Cosmic Ray Trigger Test

The purpose of this manual is to provide a user with information to run the cosmic ray trigger for the STAR Cosmic Ray Test, Summer 1999. There is an assumption that the hardware is configured in a specific way and that all the user needs to do is follow these instructions from the STAR online workstation, startrg.star.bnl.gov.

This "manual" is written with some detail in the beginning and a short summary of the commands at the end. Between are a few words about possible commands and configuration files. The user only needs to be concerned with TCU configuration files.

If one runs into problems, the people to contact are:

Eleanor Judd Zoran Milosevich
Jack Engelage Hank Crawford

After logging onto startrg (usually as user trg or sysuser), one will have to then log onto the trigger Level 1 Control (L1CTL) front end processor:

Note the extra <CR> needed.

After having logged into the L1CTL processor, it might be a good idea to take a look a what code is loaded. The command to do it is i and if the processor is in a state immediately after a reboot, the response should look something like this:

If all the code has been loaded, then one will see something like this:

If one is not sure of what state the processor is in, one can always reboot it by using a ^x, in which case one will see:

At this point, or any point, one can look to see what directory one is in. The script that runs at boot time for this particular processor, puts you in the ~trg/trg_soft_dev directory.

To run the Cosmic Ray Trigger code, one needs to be in the "/home/trg/trg_soft_dev/L1CTL" directory, so if you are not there, you need to go there.

The code then needs to be loaded (done after every reboot, for now).

To configure the Hardware and Software, one has to do the following command. NOTE: This needs to be done every time a different trigger is requested, i.e. Physics (cosmic), geometry, Pulser. This first example shows a problem in that there is a zero labeled token loaded into the TCU. The only way at this point to stop it is reboot with a ^x.

This is an example of a configuration that returns with no error.

Most of the time only one token will be requested. To get two at a time, the command is L1_IO(2,2), for three, L1_IO(2,3), etc.

To run in a continuous mode where the tokens are fed back into the TCU, one types L1_IO(1,1) for one token to go through the system continously. To stop the run, one types L1_IO(0) where you will not see this command on the screen due to the continuous output to the screen.

Trigger Command Summary

A summary of the four commands that can be issued at this point are

TCU Configuration File Summary

A few words on the configuration file needed to configure the TCU. These files are found on startrg.star.bnl.gov in the directory /home/startrg/trg/trg_soft_dev/cfg. To change the configuration file, all one needs to do is change the soft link found in /home/startrg/trg/trg_soft_dev/L1CTL. The soft link of interest is TCU_Conf.dat. The following files will be used for the Cosmic Ray tests:

Run Type Input Bit to TCU TRG Command Word Configuration File
Cosmic Ray (West) 0 4 TCU_EXT_npri_CR.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_CRBUSY.dat
Pedestals 1 4 TCU_EXT_npri_PED.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_PEDBUSY.dat
Laser 2 4 TCU_EXT_npri_LASER.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_LASERBUSY.dat
CTB MULT 3 4 TCU_EXT_npri_MULT.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_MULTBUSY.dat
ZDC EAST 4 4 TCU_EXT_npri_ZDCEAST.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_ZDCEASTBUSY.dat
ZDC WEST 5 4 TCU_EXT_npri_ZDCWEST.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_ZDCWESTBUSY.dat
TIME (Beam Injection) 6 4 TCU_EXT_npri_TIME.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_TIMEBUSY.dat
RICH (Cosmic Ray East) 7 4 TCU_EXT_npri_RICH.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_RICHBUSY.dat
cr, zdcw 0 & 5 4 TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_05.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_05BUSY.dat
mult, zdce (Beam - Gas) 3 & 4 4 TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_34.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_34BUSY.dat
mult, zdcw (Collisions) 3 & 5 4 TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_35.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_35BUSY.dat
zdce, zdcw 4 & 5 4 TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_45.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_45BUSY.dat
zdce OR zdcw 4 || 5 4 TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_4or5.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_4or5BUSY.dat
zdce, time 4 & 6 4 TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_46.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_46BUSY.dat
zdcw, time 5 & 6 4 TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_56.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_56BUSY.dat
cr, zdce, time 0 & 4 & 6 4 TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_046.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_046BUSY.dat
cr, zdcw, time (ZDCW-Cosmic-Injection) 0 & 5 & 6 4 TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_056.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_056BUSY.dat
mult, zdce, zdcw 3 & 4 & 5 4 TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_345.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_345BUSY.dat
zdce, zdcw, time 4 & 5 & 6 4 TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_456.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_456BUSY.dat
mult, zdce, zdcw, time 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 4 TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_3456.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_COLL_3456BUSY.dat
Internal Pulser 1 8 TCU_EXT_npri_INTPULS.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_INTPULSBUSY.dat
Ground Plane Pulser 1 a TCU_EXT_npri_GPPULS.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_GPPULSBUSY.dat
Geometry 1 c TCU_EXT_npri_GEOM.dat
TCU_EXT_npri_GEOMBUSY.dat

The difference in each of these files is basically the line that configures the Action Word LUT:

where the 4 indicates a physics event, a c would indicate a geometry and 8 would be a pulser. Note that the *BUSY is a configuration for a busy input, i.e. if there is a busy input (as from DAQ), then a trigger will not be issued when the line is busy. If you want to ignore all busy's, then use the corresponding files without the "BUSY" (i.e. TCU_EXT_npri_CR.dat). The busy bit is the 14th bit set in the DSM input of the TCU and is set high when the TPC is NOT busy.

The other difference is what bit pattern in the Trigger Word LUT gets loaded with one's, so for the Cosmic Ray trigger, since the DSM input into the TCU has the lowest order bit set whenever there is a trigger of this type, the Trigger Word LUT is loaded with the following line:

The difference if one wants to include the TPC busy, is that the 14th bit also has to be set, so the configuration file will look a little different when loading the Trigger Word LUT:

Overall Summary

This is a summary of what to do from the beginning. Note that one will not always have to go through all these steps from the beginning, for example, if you have been running a trigger for a while and just want to configure a different trigger (say from cosmics to pulser) then do steps 1-3 (in a window logged onto startrg.star.bnl.gov and linking the appropriate configuration file) and then do steps 8 & 9.