MAPMT & FEE boxes Useful Phone Numbers
back

The MAPMT box configuration is run from a GUI started from the main GUI. This program serves a similar function to the tower hdlc code. It configures things like timing wrt the RHIC clock etc. It also reads out voltages and currents in the boxes.

Click the orange box in the "MAPMT Fee" section and a view of the detector will open with 4 boxes for each sector showing a color representing the status of that box. The files are stored in /home/online/mapmtConfig where the links mapmt-B#-config.dat (where B# is a box number 7S1, 11P1 etc.) are set up to point to the current set stored in a directory by date.

Before using this window to configure or monitor the status of the boxes other systems have to be disabled due to communication conflicts. On the Tower FEE gui uninstall all the crates. You also have to stop the the scans in the high voltage system. This involves stopping some processes on the VxWorks processor and the steps are described in the next section. Remember to reverse the steps when done.

To start from scratch you can "load all files" and "write all boxes". This is pretty slow. It is useful to open one of the box GUIs by clicking on one of the boxes. This display has a line of text that indicates what is going on and is useful to watch to see progress. Then "read all boxes" will compare the boxes to the desired value and color the boxes as to their status, green if all is well, yellow if configuration is not correct. This same procedure should be followed once a day since these can not be scanned automatically at this time. This will allow a check of operation and load current parameters to the data base.

If you have to reboot the VxWorks processor it is worthwhile starting this window up and reading all boxes to see that everything is ok.

More often an individual box will need to be reconfigured. It may show up yellow in the display or you may find a group of 4 (or more) channels not counting in the Panitkin plots. Click on a box icon and a display of all the parameters for that box will be displayed. Then click on "Load from File" (note it will tell you it saved the file! but this is just a "grammatical" error and it really read the config file.) Then click on "Write to Box" and "Read from Box" to configure and verify. The status box should go green. If data is still not coming from box you should also try clicking on "Reload all FPGAs" and then loading the configuration again. The final resort is to power cycle but this will impact a number of boxes that all will need to be reconfigured.

Note the MAPMT boxes are water cooled. There is a water chiller in the WAH running that supplies water to them. It is useful to monitor this at least once a day by looking at it with a TV camera. See item 11 on the "How To" page on http://www.star.bnl.gov/STAR/eemc/. Currently the west camera on view 1 looks at our chiller. You should see 2 green lights and no yellow light. A flickering yellow light indicates the water is low and on steady means lower yet. The MAPMT boxes have thermal protection and will shut themselves down. If you have trouble keeping them on it could be the water is low. Check the chiller camera.