Distributed Computer Systems in the Laboratory Environment

The advent of CAMAC has had an important influence on the way in which systems are synthesized to meet the needs of data-acquisition, control and interactive computation in a laboratory environment. The modularity, standardization and widespread availability of CAMAC hardware, and the increasing standardization of conventional software packages have contributed greatly to the solution of highly complex system problems. In these problems, data networks are assuming a role of increasing importance. The present paper discusses these developments in the context of work done at Daresbury Laboratory, and illustrates them with specific examples.