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hardware:dbbc

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Documentation

DBBC Configuration

* Conditioning Module Status

Supplied 1PPS and 10 MHz reference, using the cables previously connected to the SRTP2 system. BNC→SMA adaptors were used to make the connection.

Booted into Windows from the onboard PC, configured the network settings to IP 131.217.63.164, NM 255.255.255.128, GW 131.217.63.129. Used “System” in control panel to change computer name (to dbbchb) & DNS lookup to phys.utas.edu.au.

Ran “DBBC control”, answered “y” to reconfiguration. Sampling modules were re-initialised and resumed processing with the 1PPS sync.

DBBC 3rd Party Utilities & Software

Recording Configuration DBBC And Mark5B+

This section is out of date. See the Operator Documentation section for more up-to-date info on configuring the DBBC

  • First, power cycle the DBBC electronics, via the green switch (marked “EL”) on the rear panel of the DBBC.
  • Check that the DBBC configuration file (C:\DBBC_CONF\dbbc_config_file.txt) is correct for the experiment you are setting up for. There is no obvious way to change which config file is loaded by DBBC_control so manual editing of this file is necessary. The format is as follows.

1 dbbc2.bit 612.99 4
1 dbbc2.bit 652.99 4
1 dbbc2.bit 752.99 4
1 dbbc2.bit 912.99 4
1 dbbc2.bit 632.89 4
1 dbbc2.bit 752.89 4
1 dbbc2.bit 812.89 4
1 dbbc2.bit 832.89 4
1 dbbc2.bit 325.99 4
1 dbbc2.bit 345.99 4
1 dbbc2.bit 365.99 4
1 dbbc2.bit 395.99 4
1 dbbc2.bit 445.99 4
1 dbbc2.bit 465.99 4
1 dbbc2.bit 319.99 4
1 dbbc2.bit 319.99 4

The 1 at the start says to use the core at the relevant address (1-16), the second line is the Xilinx config file to use (again, there is only one of these available and it is not user-configurable).

The third number is the frequency of the band edge for that module. If the upper band is selected for recording, then the number is the lower band edge. The planned connection for IVS observations is to use RCP only, with X-band into modules A and B, with S-band in C & D. This replicates the Ho setup with VCs 1-8 at X-band and 9-14 at S-band. The file shown is an adaptation of an R1 experiment (R1415 I think). The frequencies for X-band have been increased by 480 MHz (relative to Hobart's VC frequencies) which S-band has been increased by 120 MHz. Cores 15 and 16 have “dummy” values as they are not used at Hobart.

The last number is the bandwidth of the recorded channel.

  • Start “DBBC Control” from the desktop and answer “y” to reconfigure the DBBC. This takes ~2 minutes.
  • Check that the green LEDs on the front of the DBBC are pulsing on a 1 PPS cycle. There should be two LEDs in each column that are pulsing in sync. The other LEDs in each column should also match. If they don't, check the 10 MHz and PPS connections into the DBBC. In particular, make sure the Rohde and Schwarz oscillator is powered on as it is passing its 10 MHz reference signal through to the DBBC. It is needed as the current 10 MHz reference is “dirty” with a lot of unwanted harmonics. While the Rohde and Schwarz can handle this, it causes the DBBC to fall over. While you are there, check that the VSI cable from the back of the DBBC is securely plugged into the Mark5B slot (near the far right of the Mark5B). It is not particularly stable and if people have been working in the racks, it's very likely to be bumped out of alignment.
  • In the DBBC control window, you'll need to enter a series of commands to turn off the AGC and to select the correct filter for each module. The command for this is

dbbcifa

Which reports the current setup. Note that the commands into DBBC Control are very laggy - it will take up to 1 second for the commnd to be recognised. When you change settings and then check that it has worked, allow at least 2 seconds between the commands.

The output of the dbbcifa command should be of the form dbbcifa/1,36,agc,1,35347 where the first number is the filter (where 1 = 512-1024 MHz, 2 = 0-512 MHz, 3=1024-1536 MHz (Currently N/A) and 4 = 1536-2048 MHz (also N/A)), the second number (36 in this example) is the current attenuator setting (which ranges between 0 and 63 where 0 is +16 dB and 63 is -16 dB. If the reading is > 50 or < 10, consider changing the settings on the IF unit first.), agc indicates that the active gain control is enabled, the fourth number is also the filter (Maybe…), and the fifth is the current 1s averaged total power for the filter. This last value should be . You need to turn off the AGC and replace it with a single value. If the reported value was acceptable, then use in the following command

dbbcifa=1,36,1

Wait 2 seconds and then check the levels with dbbcifa again. The 16 bit power level should be ~32000 &#177;8000. If this is ok, then repeat the procedure for dbbcifb, replacing the attenuator setting with the appropriate level but still using filter 1.

For dbbcifc and dbbcifd, these are the S-band channels and should use filter two. The initial reading will use filter 1 and report gains set to 0 and power levels at zero. Set the band correctly using dbbcifc=2,32,2 and dbbcifd=2,32,2. Wait 2 seconds and then check that the power levels are acceptable. If not, adjust the settings and/or the IF attenuator levels.

  • Set the track formatting to GEOdesy mode with

dbbcform=geo

This should conclude the set up for the DBBC. Next is the Mark5B which is mercifully simpler and less prone to mysterious faults.

  • With the Mark5B running Debian Etch, no windows manager is started by default. If you want this, log in as oper and then use the command @@startx@@. Start two xterms on the mark5B (or use Ctrl-Alt-F1, Ctrl-Alt-F2 to switch between terminal inputs if there is no windows manager). In one terminal, start the Mark5B software with

dimino -m0 &

In the second, run tstdimino OR use the field system to send the following commands. Into the tstdimino/fs, send the commands

clock_set=32:ext
dot_set=:force

Then check the synchronisation has worked with

dot?

This last command will return a string which should have the correct date and time, with syncerr_eq_0 and FHG_off. Next, set the mode on the recorder and then you can start the recording.

mode=ext:0xffffffff:1

The :1 at the end of the line indicates how the data should be reduced. The default recording mode is 16 channels, at 16 MHz (32 Ms/s), and 2 bits per sample for a 1024 Mbps data rate. For IVS experiments recording 16 channels, the reduction value should be set to 16/bw (i.e, for an experiment using a 4 MHz bandwidth, the mode should be set to mode=ext:0xffffffff:4.

At this point, you are set to record with the tstdimino command record=on. The fs equivalents of these tstdimino commands should be something like mk5=clock_set=32:ext going from Hobart.


For IVS schedules using the 12m, there is no support for the Mark5B recorder in fs 9.9.2. When this is upgraded to 9.10, less kludging should be necessary. For now, the skd file is drudg'd with the rack set to none and the recorder as Mark5A. The procedure file is then loaded into the field system and edited (using pfmed from another terminal). The procedures to edit are setupsx (or its equivalent), preob and systemp.

In setupsx, edit the section to read

mk5=play_rate=data:4
mk5=mode=ext:0xffffffff:2
mk5=clock_set=32
mk5=1pps_source=vsi
mk5=dot_set=:force
bank_check
tpicd
mk5=mode?
mk5=clock_set?
mk5=1pps_source?
mk5=dot?

Some of these entries are probably superfluous or incorrect (especially @@tpicd@@).

preob should be edited to read

mk=dot_set=:force
systemp

systemp should read

sy=/home/oper/tsys12m.sh

This last procedure is a link to a kludged bash script to make an estimate of the system temperature using the noise cal and 0.5 dB attenuators of the RF box together with some of the unused samplers in rack 1. The measured Tsys values are currently injected into the log as comments but a better solution would be to write an ANTAB file during the experiment.

Linux OS Installation

We have had no luck with the Linux version and are currently sticking with Windows

Dave Graham provided a current version of the Linux implementation on 2010 May 11. The files were downloaded and placed in a directory on a Linux PC. An empty USB-mounted HDD was used and partitions created to match the first two as described in the READ.ME file provided by Dave. This was done using fdisk. The first partition was tagged as bootable.

Then ext3 filesystems were installed on each partition using mkfs.ext3.

The image of the first partition was then copied to the disk:
dd if=dd_sda1 /dev/sdc1

The file boot_sector was copied to the master boot record:
sudo dd if=boot_sector of=/dev/sdc bs=512 count=1

Then the first partition was mounted at /mnt/tmp
sudo mkdir /mnt/tmp
sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/tmp
Then find out the disk ID:
ls -l /dev/disk/by-id | grep sdc
Then edit the fstab file in the mounted partition so that the / partition has the ID of /dev/sdc1 and /usr2 is at /dev/sdc2, /data at /dev/sdc3. /etc/fstab then looks like this:

/dev/disk/by-id/usb-WDC_WD75_00AACS-00D6B0_DCA425712418-0:0-part1 /                    ext3       acl,user_xattr        1 1
proc                 /proc                proc       defaults              0 0
sysfs                /sys                 sysfs      noauto                0 0
debugfs              /sys/kernel/debug    debugfs    noauto                0 0
usbfs                /proc/bus/usb        usbfs      noauto                0 0
devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-WDC_WD75_00AACS-00D6B0_DCA425712418-0:0-part2 /usr2                ext3       acl,user_xattr        1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/usb-WDC_WD75_00AACS-00D6B0_DCA425712418-0:0-part3 /data                ext3       acl,user_xattr        1 2

also edit /mnt/tmp/boot/grub/menu.lst and change the disk ID.

The disk can now be booted from.

Installation on a Compact Flash Card

Use a fast (133x or better) card with 4 GB or more. We're using a SanDisk Ultra 200x 8 GB.

Mounted the CF on a Linux PC via a USB card reader. Card appears as /dev/sde1

As the card is larger than 4 GB I partitioned it to match Dave's card:

disk /dev/sdb: 4009 MB, 4009549824 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 487 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe7cf73dd

  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           2         487     3903795   83  Linux
sudo fdisk /dev/sde
p
d (deleted FAT partition)
n
p
1
2
487  (added Linux partition)
a
1 (made partition bootable)
p (should now match Dave's card)
w

Then installed an ext3 filesystem:

sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sde1

Copy the image onto the CF:

gunzip dbbc_if.gz
sudo dd if=dbbc_cf of=/dev/sde 

Mount the disk

sudo mount /dev/sde1 /mnt/tmp

Edit /mnt/tmp/fstab and change first line to read

/dev/sda1 /       ext3       noatime,acl,user_xattr        1 1

Edit /mnt/tmp/boot/grub/menu.lst and replace references to the disk partition to /dev/sda1:

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Fri May 14 13:24:28 UTC 2010
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,0)/boot/message
##YaST - activate

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 10.3
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.5-31-default root=/dev/sda1 vga=0x31a    splash=silent showopts
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.5-31-default

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 10.3
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.5-31-default root=/dev/sda1 vga=normal showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 edd=off 3
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.5-31-default

Unmount, eject and boot on DBBC!

4 GB card installation

Tim has been having trouble getting the 8 GB card to boot so I got a 4 GB SanDisk Ultra 200x card.

Partition table initially showed

4011 MB, 4011614208 cylinders
128 heads, 63 cylinders/track, 971 cylinders
units = cylinders of 8064 * 512 = 4128768 bytes

so in the “extra functionality” mode of fdisk I changed number of cylinders to 487 and number of heads to 255

partition table then could be made to match Dave's.

DBBC Power Measurement

Commercial Boards used in the DBBC

/home/www/auscope/opswiki/data/attic/hardware/dbbc.1332988330.txt.gz · Last modified: 2012/03/29 02:32 by Stuart Weston