EZCamac version 2.0,
April 9, 2008
EZCamac is a text file driven data
acquisition program for the CMC100 USB Camac Crate Controller. Any
windows computer (w98x, w2k, or xp) with a USB port can be used, even a
slow, older computer. The fast trigger response (Lam or Pulse) and the
high speed Camac readout are executed within the list processor in the
CMC100. The host computer merely has to check the FIFO buffer and read
as necessary. A CMC100 with at least version 31 firmware is required
(updates are always free, just call).
EZCamac is intended both as a learning
tool for the CMC100 and as an easy to use Camac data acquisition
system. It is limited to a single Camac crate and to a subset of the
CMC100 list processor commands. All normal Camac and FastCamac dataway
commands are supported. Command type 29, insert arbitrary 32 bit word
into memory, allows access to all list processor commands (including
tests and jumps), but requires 'hand assembly' of the program.
As a learning and debugging tool, it
allows the user to experiment with blocks of commands and with the list
processor without having to write a special host program. Everything
can be done with EZCamac and a simple text file. EZCamac handles the
CMC100 and its' USB interface, the user only has to know his Camac
modules.
As a data acquisition system, it will
execute normal Camac instructions at the rate of one every 1.5
microseconds and FastCamac at up to 30 Mbytes per second. Data is
written to a disk file either as raw binary or as decoded Ascii data.
Trigger latency (Lam or external Pulse) is a few hundred nanoseconds.
This simple program can handle trigger rates of several KiloHertz, and
data rates up to several MegaBytes per second.
The system is completely driven by a text file of commands, absolutely no computer programming is required.
Version 2.0 adds two new features, symbol definitions and a super
text file, that calls EZCamac text files. See the manual for
details.The zip file contains source code and examples.
The complete EZcamac zip file (175k)
The EZCamac Manual (pdf file, 87k)