The million turn date acquisition system BOSC

The data acquisition system BOSC has now reached a reliable operational stage after the phase of designing and debugging its complex hardware and software. The system consists of a VME-crate with a 68030 CPU-card, a timing module, a bunch selector card and 12 ADC cards each with two channels to acquire and store data of up to one million turns. The aim of the system is to measure a wide range of different signals each being recorded in one of the ADC channels. Three such crates are connected via Ethernet and Token Ring to Apollo workstations on the SPS site. Very flexible measurement requests can be sent to the crates in data-structures which are then filled with the requested data and sent back to the Apollo for processing. In the crate a complex control software running under OS9 has been developed, with several application software programs now running on the Apollo. One use of the system is for operational purposes such as tune measurements. Moreover BOSC has been the essential tool in conducting the delicate dynamic aperture experiments where the measurement needs are constantly changing