An Enhanced 8086-Based CAMAC Crate Controller

An enhanced CAMAC crate controller (ECC) has been developed for data handling for Fermilab experiment E-704. The module also is currently used in an experiment to make a precise measurement of the weak vector coupling constant. The ECC incorporates hardware to do block transfers (DMA) of CAMAC modules within the crate at several times effective CAMAC rates, or it may be programmed to do individual CAMAC transfers. If desired, data may be rippled out an ECL port to fast ECL devices, or may be written in RAM for processing within the controller itself. The EEC is implemented with the CAMAC Request/Grant protocol for use with an A-2 crate controller, allowing the ECC to be used either as an auxiliary controller or crate controller. Trigger logic in the controller allows the device to respond to any of three triggers by initiating a DMA, or dedicated crates may be daisychained, one crate providing a trigger to the next at the conclusion of each DMA. The device is built as much as possible in High Performance CMOS logic using surface mount techniques, on two 8-layer printed circuit cards.