Using VME to leverage legacy CAMAC electronics into a high speed data acquisition system
P.L. Anthony, Z. M. Szalata · OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 1997
The authors report on the first full scale implementation of a VME based Data Acquisition (DAQ) system at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). This system was designed for use in the End Station A (ESA) fixed target program. It was designed to handle interrupts at rates up to 120 Hz and event sizes up to 10,000 bytes per interrupt. One of the driving considerations behind the design of this system was to make use of existing CAMAC based electronics and yet deliver a high performance DAQ system. This was achieved by basing the DAQ system in a VME backplane allowing parallel control and readout of CAMAC branches and VME DAQ modules. This system was successfully used in the Spin Physics research program at SLAC (E154 and E155).