High Rates Test Procedure

Test procedure for building events from uHTR, while using TTT as TTC source. Test procedure assumes certain tools are available, namely the AMC13Tool, the uHTRTool, and the TTTtool.

Depending on the components you would like to test, uHTRs can be replace with other sub-system modules or with or AMC13 with special firmware, the TTT can be replace with a different TTC (or TCDS) source or with a loopback on the AMC13 and using local triggers.

1. Make sure AMC13 (in AMC13 slot) and uHTR are installed properly in the crate and that the optical fiber from TTT is connected to AMC13 properly (top fiber to bottom and vice versa)
2. Prepare uHTR and enable DAQlinks and local triggers. Using uHTRTool, follow recipe here.
3. Prepare AMC13 for data taking and enable link to desired uHTRs. You can use the AMC13Tool for this (additional information here for AMC13Tool and here for AMC13Tool2 ):
   • NOTE: For now (July 16, 2013), only enable link to uHTR SN 4 (which is likely in the AMC10 slot), there seems to be a bug in SN 7 which is causing the system not to write events to the monitor buffer.
   • NOTE: examples will assume the use of a single uHTR in slot AMC10 (link 9). (Remember the physical crate counts from 1 while the links count from 0.)

   • Pick an action (h for menu): i 9 b
     Enabling AMC inputs from list: 9
     Link status: 02000200
     Enable DAQ Link
     Stop EvB when Mon Buf Full
     'CONTROL1': 008bc003
        

   • Status should show that Input link 09 is both enabled and locked:

     Pick an action (h for menu): st
     
     *****AMC13 Status*****
     Status display detail level: 1
     Control 0: 28000028
       Monitor Buffer Empty
       TTC Not Ready
     Control 1: 008bc003
       Save DAQ data to MonBuf
       MonBuff full stops EVB
       DAQ Link Enabled
       Run Mode
     AMC Link Status: 02000200
       AMC13 Enabled Inputs: 09
       AMC Input links locked: 09
     AMC Port Status: 0fff0000
       --All AMC Link Versions Correct--
       Unsynced AMC Ports: 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11
     AMC Bc0 Status: 00000018
       --No BC0s locked--
     EVB Counters:  (All 32-bit counters read 0x0)
     etc...
     

   • NOTE: Typically the BC0s for 09 (or which ever enabled links have a uHTR) should be locked, indicating that the Bc0s are be received and send through the backplane. If Bc0s are not locked, you may have to do a clock setup and lumi reset in the uHTR.
4. Set high prescaling (~10,000.):
   • This can be done in one of two ways:
     • Using the Mega Monitor prescaling (reg T1 0x2, bits 23,22-19) (which checks for events that end in a given number of 0's in binary min 5 - max 20) or
     • Using the scale factor bits (reg T1 0x2, bits 15-0) (see last version Wu's specs for register information)
   • With Mega Monitor Prescaling (don't forget to enable Mega Monitoring):

     Pick an action (h for menu): mm e
     Pick an action (h for menu): sps 13
     Saving every 0x2000 event
     Pick an action (h for menu): rv 0x2
     Reading T1:
       00000002: 00b80000
     

     • Prescaling w/ 13 zeros, one event in 8192
5. Send triggers at high rate (100kHz) from TTT (info on TTT and related scripts here):
   • Open TTTtool on connected TTT (currently SN 2)
   • Run setup_tts.py script to send randomly generated 100kHz L1As using predefined scripts (make sure script is running w/ backpressure):

     Enter flash action, 'h' for menu: sc random_100kHz_rules
     

6. Check to make sure that L1A Ctr is incrementing and that the Moniter Buffer is being filled. Make sure to fix any unexpected errors.

1. Lower prescaling in AMC13Tool and read out events (see documentation on 'df' command here)
   • Lowering the prescaling, lowers the rate of L1As that the board is able to handle, resulting in backpressure
   • NOTE: If prescaling is too low (or no scaling), L1A overflow may occur causing the TTC Sync to be Lost.
   • Hopefully, when backpressure is enabled, at certain prescaling, the TTT should gracefully respond to the TTS state in backpressure and reduce the trigger rate
   • NOTE: The full event readout command 'df' currently has a bug which fails to dump full events and causes errors, bug fixes being investigated. Reduced dumps (reading only EvN, OrN, BcN) can be performed successfully (w/ or w/o continuous read) 'df r c'.
2. The triggers can be stop using TTTtool:

   Enter flash action, 'h' for menu: sc stop_trigs
   

-- DavidZou - 23 Sep 2013