February 23, 2005: In mid-June 2004, failure of a primary cooling fan caused a power supply to overheat in our venerable VAX-based computer control system which had been in service for 14 years.

April-May 2003: The ATF web site has been redesigned.

October-December 2002: Upgrade of the ATF control system continues to make substantial progress and will soon be completed.

March 2001: As reported in an earlier ATF Newsletter, the new control system computer has arrived.

June/July 2001: Since the beginning of June, there have been two major accomplishments in the ATF computer control system upgrade, Successful porting of user display windows and concurrent hardware sharing.

September 2001: The long awaited 100 MHz Ethernet CAMAC crate controllers have arrived, replacing the 10 MHz units which were on loan from the manufacturer pending final delivery of the 100 MHz components.

January 14, 2000: Control displays and software were ready for the first VISA runs on Tuesday and Wednesday.

March 10, 2000: Software to read the new diode array diagnostic has been completed and tested as far as possible without real signals.

August 25, 2000: Planned upgrades of ATFSERVER1 are now completed, as follows.....

March 19, 1999: Software/operator interfaces for new 30A power supplies completed and tested.

March 26, 1999: Orders have been placed for components needed to build a duplicate frame grabber system and to improve the performance of the existing one.

May 14, 1999: Cathode cleaning performed twice: May 8 and May 13. Laser energy fluctuations noted as function of position on cathode.

May 21, 1999: Testing of new emittance measuring program completed.

May 28, 1999: Program for YAG energy feedback has been written. Debugging in progress.

June 4, 1999: Debugging continued on the YAG slow drift energy correction software.

July 9, 1999: As part of the network upgrade for building 820, both the 10MHz thick wire network backbone (yellow coax) and the thin wire (black RG58) will be disabled and/or removed in about 30 days.

July 16, 1999: G. Rakowsky provided us with information on how to drive the correcting coils associated with the dispersion magnet.

July 23, 1999: Emergency replacement for the control system’s ailing disk drive was completed Monday morning as planned.

August 6, 1999: New ATF control system development effort.....

August 27, 1999: Software changes, needed to accommodate beam line 3 magnet reassignments, are underway.

September 17, 1999: ITD has completed all wiring needed for replacement of ATF’s CAMAC serial highway as part of the planned upgrade of our computer control system.

October 1, 1999: As part of ATF’s control system upgrade, we have been extensively testing Vista’s Vsystem software tools operating under Linux on Intel PC hardware.

October 22, 1999: Tests/learning of new Vsystem software under Linux continues.

November 19, 1999: Intensive testing of the new Vista software under Linux continues. In particular, a key problem with software interrupts and inter-process communication via reliable signals has been resolved.

December 3, 1999: IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ALL ATF CONTROL SYSTEM USERS Due to the recent attempts by hackers to break into BNL computers, the main ATF control system no longer accepts incoming requests from non-BNL machines for many services including telnet and ftp.

December 17, 1999: A block of temporary IP addresses has been set aside for dynamic allocation (DHCP) by ATF users.

May 2001: ATF supported six experiments in the last five months. These are ....

August 2001: ATF had very successful operations in August despite the shortage of manpower and the heat wave.

October 2001: ATF was shut down for the week of October 22 for scheduled maintenance. During the shutdown we did miscellaneous facility maintenance jobs, new computer control system tests and installation of three new experiments.

January 14, 2000: During these first few weeks of the New Year, a large effort was placed on the VISA experiment.

January 21, 2000: We have completed the cable labeling and assignments for the installed VISA wiring.

January 28, 2000: Aside from the snow and ice, and the temperature dropping to 55 degrees inside the facility, business at the ATF was normal.

February 4, 2000: Marc Montemagno has been completing the ordering phase of the new linac water temperature control system.

February 18, 2000:During these past two weeks of maintenance, we were able to complete many tasks. The aging condenser coil for the experiment hall air conditioner was replaced by plant engineering a/c group.

February 25, 2000: During this short week and back to running, we experienced a failure on the high energy slit.

March 10, 2000: The new circuit breaker panel for additional power was installed by NSLS Electricians and is now ready for service.

March 24, 2000: The week was filled with frustrations on three fronts. The initial failure with the high voltage Spellman power supplies associated with the ATF linac led to the continuing search for the new Maxwell replacements.

March 31, 2000: This week started with the replacement of the bent pop-in on beamline # 3.

April 14, 2000: We have finally come to the end of the road as far as the YAG laser covers are concerned.

April 21, 2000: Monday Maintenance Day involved the opening of the gun clamshell and tuning for field balance with the network analyzer borrowed from the good folks at the 200 MeV Linac.

May 5, 2000: Monday’s Maintenance Day proved interesting in the never ending rf jitter scenario.

May 19, 2000: Coming out of the maintenance period and into operations went pretty smoothly. The cable assembly that operates the transport plug door was replaced by Bob Harrington and works better than ever.

June 9, 2000:The terawatt laser vessel has successfully passed all inspection criteria’s and has been reinstalled at the ATF.

July 26, 2000: Over the past two weeks we have been able to move our people into the new offices of 820-M. We now have all of the ATF staff under one roof.

August 25, 2000: With the arrival of Igor Pavlichin, the Terawatt laser re-assembly is in full swing.

March 26, 1999:Technical Tasks

April 16, 1999:Technical Task and Accomplishments

May 21, 1999:Technical Tasks

June 4, 1999: During this short week, we reinstalled the new YAG oscillator.

June 11, 1999: The previously owned ac line conditioner was repaired and tested.

July 9, 1999: ATF experimental hall modification for VISA was finished and approved for operation by NSLS safety.

July 16, 1999: After many days of troubleshooting the rf system, Marc Montemagno has found major causes of erratic behavior.

July 23, 1999: The main concern this week was RF stability. The older high voltage power supply borrowed from SDL was not well regulated enough for our needs.

July 30, 1999: This week I completed the temperature stabilizer prototype for the RF phase/amplitude drivers.

August 6, 1999: ATF Schedule for September and October: The only request received so far is from the Compton experiment.

August 13, 1999: This weeks ATF activities concentrated on the preparation of components for the extension of beam line #3.

August 20, 1999: During the week of HGHG we have experienced multiple failures in the Darlington power supply system.

August 27, 1999: This week proved quite interesting! The remaining low level rf temperature controller was installed in the gun system and the results were overwhelming.

September 3, 1999: Technical Tasks

September 17, 1999: This week we were able to complete the VISA #3a ‘test line’ including computerized operation of all magnets, pop-in’s and diagnostics.

October 1, 1999: The FD5 magnet transfer switch installed two weeks ago suffered dearly from rf modulator noise.

October 8, 1999: The exterior shielding for the VISA beamline was installed and a radiation fault test was performed.

October 22, 1999: The Joulemeter charging power supply for the YAG laser system is complete.

October 29, 1999: On the Monday maintenance day, we anticipated finding a defective capacitor in the gun modulator.

November 5, 1999: Due to various illnesses and absentees, this weeks workload was not as productive as anticipated.

November 12, 1999: During this short week, we were able to complete two of the stripline monitor circuit boards for the VISA Experiment.

November 19, 1999: Monday was the start of the experiment hall shutdown. During this time we provided technical assistance to the Russian BPM experiment in the 0* line including operations and tech support.

December 3, 1999: The construction of the VISA stripline monitors has been completed.

December 10, 1999: Part of the week was dedicated to repair and assistance for the experimental program.

December 17, 1999: As the new year approaches, the list of things to do in 1999 are dwindling quickly.

June 4, 1999: Tuesday: Marcus , Bob and Igor installed the oscillator and realigned the optics.

June 11, 1999: The planned Monday beam study was not done due to a lost lens shipment

July 9, 1999: A laser mask for locating the electron beam on the center of the cathode was prepared, installed and tested.

July 16, 1999: This week we ran 3 days STELLA. Beam quality was good.

September 3, 1999: We had VISA beam line safety walk-through, and several items come to our attention.

September 10, 1999: We have corrected the items pointed out by the NSLS Beam Line Safety Committee walk through for VISA beam line.