| |
To fulfill the new requirements of the post-accelerator mode of the electron stretcher facility ELSA, a new computer control system was developed during the early 1990s. Providing capabilities to control and monitor the facility, it represents the top layer of a distributed control system composed of HP workstations, VME and field bus processors as well as linux based personal computer s. In addition to regular updates and improvements, the HP-UX operated part of the control system recently was ported to linux, so the outdated HP workstations could be replaced by a single linux PC. All reference values, for example the betatron tune or the extraction energy, can be specified using a window-based graphical user front end. They are directly computed to hardware compatible representations. Vice versa, measured beam parameters, e.g. the transversal beam emittance, are displayed for easy user access, allowing real time diagnostics. This abstraction layer allows for an intuitive approach to machine operation, requiring no detailed knowledge of the hardware implementation. In this contribution, the design principles and implementation at different layers of the control system are presented.
|
|