MiniDAQ Processors

Processor Hardware

The MiniDAQ VME crate holds five CPU's and a memory module:

• Two Motorola MVME-167, 68K-based processors, scaup and eider, each with 8 MB (?) of RAM.

• Three Cyclone 964, i960-based processors, scoter, wigeon and gadwall, each with two "Rosie" squall modules to receive TPC readout board data. Their memory consists of 8 MB of shared RAM accessible from the VME bus and 2 MB of private RAM. In addition, each Rosie holds 4 MB of VRAM, with less than half dedicated to the readout board buffers.

• One 32-MB memory card used for interprocessor transactions and to buffer events.

Network Connection

All five MiniDAQ processors have 9600 baud console port connections to the nsdts1 terminal server, but scaup has the only direct connection to the 10 Mb/s Ethernet; the other four processors connect to the network via scaup and the 32-MB shared memory card. Therefore, scaup is assigned two IP numbers: one for the VME backplane, and one for its external network connection.

The other processors must "register" with scaup as a "proxy client" at a very early stage in their boot procedures so as to access the network. The i960's appear to register sequentially, passing the bus grant left to right, so that a failure by one processor to register can cause the others to also fail. Immediately after booting, the i960 network interfaces are disabled, are are not normally seen to be functional by the user.

Because the bus grant for the three i960's is daisy-chained, and because each i960 occupies two slots, with the bus grant jumpered over the intervening slot, the i960 leftmost in the crate must be in the slot normally occupied by scoter, and gaps are not allowed between the i960's. Within these constraints, MiniDAQ can use any combination/permution of one to three i960's (provided that one uses the MiniDAQ Table Browser to edit the table list appropriately, disabling higher-numbered tables first. [Disabling the relevant Rosie's at configuration time won't help, because tables are "disabled" at runtime by the i960 itself returning a zero-length table.]

The VME processors and memory module appear to have a limited margin of cooling, tending to give errors when their air flow is even somewhat obstructed.

Boot Parameters

The MiniDAQ processor boot parameters are stored in non-volatile memory, and should not normally have to be changed unless the IP numbers are changed. Among these parameters is the location from which to load the VxWorks operating system. and the startup script which completes the configuration.

The processrors use rsh to access the boot host (currently deneb); ftp booting often fails because the three i960's seem to overtax the bandwidth and time out. The current (25-JUN-1998) MiniDAQ boot parameters at BNL are:

scaup:

boot device          : ei
processor number     : 0 
host name            : deneb.star.bnl.gov
file name            : /vxdevboot/boot/scaup/vxWorks
inet on ethernet (e) : 130.199.88.201:fffffc00
inet on backplane (b): 130.199.88.206:fffffc00
host inet (h)        : 130.199.88.202
user (u)             : starmdaq
flags (f)            : 0x28 
target name (tn)     : scaup
startup script (s)   : /vxdevboot/boot/scaup/startup.cmd

eider:

boot device          : ei
processor number     : 1 
host name            : deneb.star.bnl.gov
file name            : /vxdevboot/boot/eider/vxWorks
inet on ethernet (e) : 130.199.88.203:fffffc00
host inet (h)        : 130.199.88.202
user (u)             : starmdaq
flags (f)            : 0x20 
target name (tn)     : eider
startup script (s)   : /vxdevboot/boot/eider/startup.cmd

scoter:

boot device          : sm=0x87000000
processor number     : 2 
host name            : deneb.star.bnl.gov
file name            : /vxdevboot/boot/scoter/vxWorks
inet on backplane (b): 130.199.88.204:fffffc00
host inet (h)        : 130.199.88.202
gateway inet (g)     : 130.199.88.206
user (u)             : starmdaq
flags (f)            : 0x120 
target name (tn)     : scoter
startup script (s)   : /vxdevboot/boot/scoter/startup.cmd

wigeon:

boot device          : sm=0x87000000
processor number     : 3 
host name            : deneb.star.bnl.gov
file name            : /vxdevboot/boot/wigeon/vxWorks
inet on backplane (b): 130.199.88.207:fffffc00
host inet (h)        : 130.199.88.202
gateway inet (g)     : 130.199.88.206
user (u)             : starmdaq
flags (f)            : 0x120 
target name (tn)     : wigeon
startup script (s)   : /vxdevboot/boot/wigeon/startup.cmd

gadwall:

boot device          : sm=0x87000000
processor number     : 4 
host name            : deneb.star.bnl.gov
file name            : /vxdevboot/boot/gadwall/vxWorks
inet on backplane (b): 130.199.88.205:fffffc00
host inet (h)        : 130.199.88.202
gateway inet (g)     : 130.199.88.206
user (u)             : starmdaq
flags (f)            : 0x120 
target name (tn)     : gadwall
startup script (s)   : /vxdevboot/boot/gadwall/startup.cmd

Page maintenance:

Roy Bossingham, LBNL
RRBossingham@lbl.gov