This splicing in of fast binary channels we discussed at yesterday's and today's meetings is getting messy with the current chassis. Cleaning up the cable mess was a key point, so I got a 4U height DEEP chassis from Rich and drew up a front panel for a modular approach that we can use at the other 40m locations as well. The front panel will have slots for smaller slot panels to which we can mount the breakout boards as before, so all the wiring that I've done can be transfered to this design. If some new connector standard is required it will be easy to draw a new slot panel from a template, for now I'll make some with two DSub37 and IDC50. Since this chassis is so huge it will have ample space for cross-connects.

I also moved the communication of c1auxex2 with the Acromag units off the martian network, connecting them with a direct cable connection out of the second ethernet port. To test if this works I configured the second ethernet port of c1auxex2 to have the IP address 192.168.114.1 and one of the acromag units to have 192.168.114.11, and initialized an IOC with some test channels. Much to my surprise this actually worked straight out of the box, and the test channels can be accessed from the control room computers without having a direct ethernet link to the acromag modules. huzzah!

Steve: it would be nice to have all plugs- connectors lockable