Testing PulseNet:

These are the testing procedures drawn up for PulseNet, rev1. It will be largely the same for rev2.
  1. Smoke Test.
  2. Check Ring Oscillator. It should be ~1.6MHz
  3. Program Astronomy unit and have it echo back. This will verify that the flip-flops and one of the I/O ports are working
  4. Start slowly clocking the module. Check the power meter for excess dissipation.
  5. Test samplers through the astronomy port. Send them square waves of variable amplitude and verify functionality. Make sure that the astronomy module counts properly, too.
  6. Test the coincidence logic by feeding a matched pair the same large negative pulse.
  7. Check the sensitivity of the samplers by decreasing the amplitude of the input pulses (perhaps through the astronomy port).
  8. Check for cross-talk between physically adjacent pins. This shouldn't be a problem.
  9. Test Pulsenet with real photomultiplier tube outputs.
  10. Check for noise rejection from hot event waveforms.

Andrew Howard
Last updated: 11/19/2004
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