July 2001
M. Lacasse

Telescopes
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	The telescopes were operated with the new control system.  We
had simultaneous tracking of stars (including ccd & tip/tilt) with the
three telescopes.  Acquisition times are still a bit long and we are
looking to automate most of that process.  The C telescope motor
amplifier is "too electrically loud".  The chopped drive for the motor
is radiating power (it is after all chopping a couple of amps at tens
of kilohertz) into the anorad system, the PA system and probably the
PICNIC camera.  Replacement motor/amplifiers like those of the other
telescopes (which the manufacturer discontinued) have been found and
will be purchased and installed.  Some solder joints and components in
the telescope limit electronics had aged/failed - the limit condition
would intermittently appear while the telescope was moving at
locations not near the limit - these were fixed (thanks Rafael).  The
flags on the north roll axis were repositioned slightly higher because
the home sensor was missing them at -15 degrees.  The Roll axis +
limit flag still needs to be modified to allow access to Polaris after
the reconfiguration of the sensors.

Long Delay
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	The long delay lines are operating again after the hacker
takeover of the long delay computer.  We wiped the hard drive and
installed Red-Hat Linux 6.2.  The IP address was changed because 19
appears to be blacklisted.  The long delay software was reinstalled
and modified for the new IP address, the new kernel and generally
debugged.  One "feature" which remains is that under control of the
Quadra Delay Line program the action following a move absolute is
different for the two delay lines.  Delay line 1 moves to the
commanded position while Delay line 2 moves by the commanded distance.
Most moves are done under the servo command which moves to the
position.  There are differences in the server code which Mike Brewer
believes to be correct.  The long delay lines are currently not
accessible by the SUN/VME OT.  That portion of the code was not
implemented in the current version.  We will wait for that to appear
before chasing the problem further.  The plan is to allow control of
the long delay yaw from the OT.  That will also be worked on over the
summer.

Short Delay
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	The second SD carriage was installed by Wes, Marc and others.
The cart would not operate well with its normal configuration. It
would oscillate and some of the airpads would also drag.  The newly
re-finished airpads got scratched.  The damper plates were removed,
one set of side magnets were removed, the top magnets were replaced by
the "extra" side magnets.  The cart now operates well and at a lower
air pressure.  On the electronics side it was found that operating
both systems together gave erratic results.  The galil drive signals
appear to be marginal and one cart's direction bit was perceived as
changing when the other cart was driven.  RC filters were added to the
direction line and that corrected this problem.  Some neatening of the
filter should be done over the summer.  The motor current signal will
be sensed so that it can more easily be determined that the motor is
requiring more force to move.  BNC's to this test point will be added
once Marc is able to get the OT working and can look at the available
signals.