Digital Frontend Controller (DFEC) Communications

(Part of the Level 1 Trigger based on DØ Central Fiber Tracker, Central Preshower and Forward Preshower information)

This document is supposed to gather information and links related to DFEC communication. The SciFi Level 1 Trigger System consists of seven DFE crates, each containing one DFEC DFE Controller card and up to 20 DFE cards. All status and control communications go through the DFEC. This includes configuration download and status monitoring.

 

Documents & Links

Jamieson Olsen's DFE pages. Contains a system overview; has a copy of Nick's engineering notes (see below) in PDF format. In particular see:
Jamieson's DFEC page.
David Evans' DFE download & monitoring pages.
Geoff Savage's CFT controls pages.

Nick Weydert's DFEC documents

DFE System Configuration Bookkeeping and the Trigger Database

(or: L1 Firmware versioning using NeoType version numbers). Updated 2001-09-18: device type version numbers.

Basic Epics Tasks:

(Summary of a meeting on 2000-6-27.)
  • get status: check system/DFEC status (read registers).
  • hard reset
  • hold reset (=disable outputs of DFEx cards).
  • check version: read back/verify firmware version downloaded to a DFEx card (read DFEx backend chip register).
  • initialize: trigger full crate configuration from DFEC to DFEx cards.
  • load single card configuration from DFEC to DFEx card.
  • download one file (one DFEx card's worth) to DFEC flash memory.
  • download full crate configuration to DFEC flash memory.
  • card status: check status of a DFEx card (read DFEx backend chip registers).

 

Last modified September 28th, 2001, by SG.
Please send questions or comments to Stefan Grünendahl (Stefan@fnal.gov).