Author Topic: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards  (Read 8919 times)

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Offline EEVblogTopic starter

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Offline sibeen

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2017, 12:44:23 am »
I just love watching these videos of board porn.
 

Offline uwezi

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #2 on: May 17, 2017, 07:42:17 am »
 :popcorn: I was hoping these boards would be appreciated  :popcorn:

Offline cj

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #3 on: May 17, 2017, 08:27:22 am »
Wow these boards are way more complex than the CAMAC boards I used when I was doing work at cyclotron particle accelerator facility at the Eindhoven technical University.

In particle physics some detectors will generate a pulse when a particle hits the detector and the height of the pulse is a measure of energy. The ADCs used in these applications use track and hold circuits which tracks a pulse until it reaches its maximum value then hold the value which then is passed to a regular ADC. After the ADC is done the hold circuit is reset so it can capture another pulse. The digital data from the ADC has low value for low energy and high values for high energy. If a histogram is made it shows how often a certain energy level is detected. The result is a graph showing the energy spectrum of detected particles.
In other experiments the detection of two or multiple particles and the timing of the detection is important this requires high speed electronics and high resolution event detectors.
This results in some very cool electronics as can be seen on the boards Dave has got.

The TRW chip on the first board Dave shows isn’t a processor but a 10bit 20MSPS flash ADC (TDC1020).

CJ
« Last Edit: May 17, 2017, 11:11:46 am by cj »
 
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Offline free_electron

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #4 on: May 17, 2017, 03:00:15 pm »
there's some LH0032 opamps on there.

family of the fast and damn fast opamps...

http://www.repeater-builder.com/humor/pdfs/national-lh0033c-damn-fast.pdf
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Any comments, or points of view expressed, are my own and not endorsed , induced or compensated by my employer(s).
 
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Offline donmr

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #5 on: May 17, 2017, 07:38:56 pm »
Some time ago, as an EE student, I worked in a lab building boards like that.  It was great experience.

The detectors were boxes with arrays of ~200-400 wires per box.  Each wire went to a channel of an acquisition board. So each box had a lot of boards.  This was all very fast (for the day) and some of the nearby equipment generated large EM pulses so signal integrity was a big deal.

I learned a lot from the ex Boeing engineers who ran the EE part of things.
 

Offline k4rlhp

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #6 on: May 17, 2017, 07:51:59 pm »
Dave mentions framing one of these boards.
This reminds me of a legend that used to circulate around here.

Allegedly, a guy in his early thirties used old boards as tapestry for his room. All the walls in the room covered.
Apparently, some crap leaked from caps and whatnot over time and the guy developed a condition that cost him his dear life.

The guy was a legend in a crooked way and I knew him from a local fidonet bbs and the corresponding meet ups.
For sure, a room decorated like that would have been right up that guys alley.

If that legend has any truth to it, then Dave needs to find a hazmat container for all the old goodies sent to him, or else... :'(

We're watching out for you, bro  ;)

 
 

Offline JPortici

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #7 on: May 17, 2017, 07:56:47 pm »
all that yummy lecroy porn.

these series of modules usually come up on ebay but i never found any info.

wish there were fan sites for lecroy like there is for tek and hp...
 

Offline thm_w

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #8 on: May 17, 2017, 08:28:11 pm »
When looking at prices for the LH0032 I found them with this awesome logo
Profile -> Modify profile -> Look and Layout ->  Don't show users' signatures
 
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Offline EvilGeniusSkis

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #9 on: May 17, 2017, 08:47:23 pm »
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I remember correctly, if you only have one S/N you assume it is in the middle of the range, meaning for the board at 4:10, we can assume 50 were made.

On another note, any plans for episode 1000 Dave?
 

Offline gemby

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #10 on: May 17, 2017, 09:50:12 pm »
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I remember correctly, if you only have one S/N you assume it is in the middle of the range, meaning for the board at 4:10, we can assume 50 were made.

On another note, any plans for episode 1000 Dave?

Speaking of episode #1000, i am still waiting for episode #741
 

Offline mikemcginn@mcginnweb.net

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #11 on: May 17, 2017, 10:03:29 pm »
I worked at LeCroy from 12/84 until 11/91. When I left I was a Test Engineer working on Fastbus. LeCroy built hundreds of the 1878/79 series of TDC's and the 1880 series of charge ADC's. I am not sure about the 1872 Dave has that used the MTD chip - that was around the time I left.

I would go into the counting houses at Fermilab, CERN and Brookhaven and they would have racks full of these things. This was before LeCroy became solely an oscilloscope company.
 

Offline uwezi

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555 - of course
« Reply #12 on: May 17, 2017, 11:01:19 pm »
In the youtube comments there was a question about a 555 on those boards. Well, I found one! I am not sure if Dave got a copy of this board as well - I could only fit so many different boards into the box and stay just short of 20 kg. I even carried 3 boards out of the post office because they were above the limit...

 :-/O Anyway, I found one on a Lecroy 1875 TDC board

Sorry for all the electrons falling out of the Lecroy chips to the left...  :-DD

Quote
(The 1875A input circuit uses time-to-charge converters to supply LeCroy Model MIQ401 4-Channel Charge Multiplexers with charge proportional to the time between Common Start and Stops. The MIQ401 is designed to do the integrate-and-store function as well as the output multiplexing to the common integrator & ADC. http://teledynelecroy.com/lrs/dsheets/1875a.htm)
« Last Edit: May 17, 2017, 11:05:14 pm by uwezi »
 

Offline uwezi

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another 555
« Reply #13 on: May 18, 2017, 01:57:20 pm »
There is another 555 (or more exactly an MC1455) on a board which Dave showed in the video as well - it's right in the middle of the Lecroy 1885F ADC board, seen right after the guest appearance of the Swedish chef: https://youtu.be/0DmzxUM-9v0?t=14m34s

 :-/O
 

Offline Neilm

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #14 on: May 18, 2017, 06:37:33 pm »
There is nothing wrong with the 555 chip - I have had occasions where I needed a simple pulse train or very simple pulse and have used them. Last occurence 4 years years ago
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe. - Albert Einstein
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Offline uwezi

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #15 on: May 18, 2017, 08:34:12 pm »
There is nothing wrong with the 555 chip

Of course not and nobody said there would be. It's just that somebody asked if there were any 555s on these boards - and yes, they are  ;D
 

Offline uwezi

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #16 on: May 18, 2017, 08:37:19 pm »
By the way, I find it amazing how thin the traces are on this particular board. I mean, you don't need wide traces if you don't have any current to transport, but this looks extremely thin - feeding two of them between two 2.54mm dip pins...
 

Offline mikemcginn@mcginnweb.net

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #17 on: May 18, 2017, 09:24:34 pm »
You should have seen the traces on the multiwire boards LeCroy used on some Fastbus products.

 

Offline JonM

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Re: EEVblog #994 - CERN/Fermilab Particle Accelerator Boards
« Reply #18 on: May 30, 2017, 04:15:49 am »
Ahh, the "original" LeCroy. The first LeCroy device I used was a 10 step attenuator box in 1973. During eight years working in two nuclear physics labs there were a fair amount of LeCroy electronics in the mix.

When I moved to chemical physics in 1980, partly for the one-room / one-person, lab experience I brought along nuclear physics techniques. One thing I needed was a TDC (time to digital converter, mentioned in the video). The first problem was that a CAMAC "crate" and the associated computer interface was beyond my now small budget. So, I built a "poor man's CAMAC interface" that connected a single CAMAC module to an Apple II (running the UCSD pSystem). The next problem was that the LeCroy 2228A TDC had a common start but eight independent stop signals while I needed to deliver multiple stop pulses on a single line. LeCroy was happy to suggest that I add seven mod wires to make that happen, and they said the warranty would not be affected. I also had to build an ECL fanout to shorten the pulses and supply them to all of the stops.

When LeCroy introduced their first oscilloscope it was a bit of a shock, but it was likely an outgrowth of their line of CAMAC "transient recorders". By then I was in industry and ended up building a LeCroy scope and arbitrary waveform generator into a large instrument, with the added fun of being a beta tester for the AWG. LeCroy discontinued the physics instrumentation lines in 2001 to focus on scopes, etc. At some point after that (I believe) they were acquired by Teledyne.

As for NIM and CAMAC, both were heavily used in nuclear physics, NIM modules (in NIM bins) were the analog devices, and CAMAC modules (in CAMAC crates) were the digital world.
 
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