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Abstract

An overview of FIERA is presented with emphasis on its recent upgrade to PCI. The PCI board hosts two DSPs, one for real time control of the camera and another for on-the-fly processing of the incoming video data. In addition, the board is able to make DMA transfers, to synchronize to other boards alike, to be synchronized by a TIM bus and to control PULPO via RS232. The design is based on the IOP480 chip from PLX, for which we have developed a device driver for both Solaris and Linux. One computer is able to host more than one board and therefore can control an array of FIERA detector electronics. PULPO is a multifunctional subsystem widely used at ESO for the housekeeping of CCD cryostat heads and for shutter control. The upgrade of PULPO is based on an embedded PC running Linux. The upgraded PULPO is able to handle 29 temperature sensors, control 8 heaters and one shutter, read out one vacuum sensor and log any combination of parameters.

Key words  Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs) - CCD controllers - DSP - PCI

European Southern Observatory

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