A flexible general purpose VME data acquisition system in a Kmax environment

A flexible general purpose data acquisition system based on VME standard modules has been designed for laboratory setup and for small and medium size nuclear physics experiment. The system is composed of a VME crate (housing different kind of front-end modules, TDC, ADC, CFD, Scaler..) and a personal computer physically connected to the hardware with a gigabit PCI to VME interface optical fiber. VME transactions are handled by a DSP server sequencer that collects data from front-end modules and organizes them in formatted buffers that are read by a complete application based on a Kmax environment. Data saving, on line sorting as well as slow control are possible through an efficient graphical user interface. Diagnostic functions and error report messages are also available to detect hardware failures or incorrect setting for the used modules. Integration in a more complex data acquisition system has been already performed in several experiment performed in different laboratories (i.e. LNL, GSI).