Re-using legacy Atlas TPS´s

In the lifetime of a test station, it may become at some point too costly or impossible to maintain the hardware: some devices cannot be repaired and cannot be easily replaced with another one without having to change the driver. The repair rate of the station can also be such that it becomes time consuming to try to run a complete TPS without getting failures, not due to the unit under test (UUT), but to the station itself. The decision is then made to build a new station with today´s technology. Due to the cost of creating and validating new ATLAS TPS´s, the solution that is often chosen is to create a new test station with the same capabilities as the legacy station, and to re-use the ATLAS legacy TPS´s as much as possible. That decision will have to be based on a study that will determine whether it is first of all even possible to gather the necessary information. In order to draw the new requirements for the test station as far as the hardware and the software, and another study that will determine if it is more cost effective to take this route than to obtain a turn key solution and re-write all the ATLAS TPS´s. There are basically three parts to consider in the process of doing so: the documentation, the hardware and, the software. We will address those issues and examine possible solutions in order to overcome the obstacles that we may encounter