Amazing mailbag dumpster find!
Boards for particle accelerator testing at CERN and Fermilab found in a dumpster at the The Svedberg Laboratory in Sweden:
http://www.tsl.uu.se/
Designed by Lecroy!
Also a look at FASTBUS, VME, CAMAC modular crate electronics.
Forum: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-994-cernfermilab-particle-accelerator-boards/'>http://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-994-cernfermilab-particle-accelerator-boards/
LINKS:
http://teledynelecroy.com/lrs/dsheets/1881m.htm
http://cdn.teledynelecroy.com/files/manuals/1872aman.pdf
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/673198/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:23031694
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=wDnUBwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA927&dq=lecroy%20mtd132&pg=PA927 #v=onepage&q=lecroy%20mtd132&f=false
Thanks to Uwe Zimmermann:
http://katalog.uu.se/profile/?id=N3-1095
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I Am going to have to profusely apologize to you Zimmerman if that's correct pronunciation from Germany this one has been sitting here for does it have a date on it? I don't even want to read the date because it's going to be ridiculously embarrassing. We cleaned up the love last week and this was I just had a whole bunch of stuff piled on because it was too big to fit on the mailbag shelf. It's heavy too, so it sort of sat down here, but then other stuff got piled on top and it was forgotten about. So sorry.

It's probably been here for like a year or something so I'm highly embarrassed. but better late than never. Hi Dave I Guess you got confused right now I do all my German viewers. Yes, the package was mailed from Germany and I am German but I follow you from Sweden where I am now a lecturer at the University of Uppsala cool I've heard of that.

So these are dumpster diving stuff. Um, thank you very much you aa couple of old chips and but these are big. Ah there. Yeah.

I got to take the front cover off, but they're massive. Here's a better one. here. you go absolutely massively.

This: Save them from the dumpster. Whatever the heck they are. They are all related to particle detection in medical applications. Interesting I'm too older RF chips or some research.

well I wonder if I can decap those and get them under the new way for our microscopes? That'd be interesting? So yeah, I'm Poe just specialize been a kid. Particle detection stuff Wow interesting. I Probably how many of these would they have made? Not many like 20 or on. So these gigantic boards are related to particle accelerator detection and stuff like that particle detection for medical applications and these were found in the dumpster at the University of Upsala and use a lecturer there and about a metric ton of stuff with throwing out at the said bird lab.

I Would have to check the pronunciation of that. but anyway Wow Look at these things. now. You would think that these are memory right? You would think that's classic like memory bank.

No, no, but these are motor Roll I Am MC 102 3-1 which is a jewel high-speed flip-flop like 220 Meg toggle frequency you what? But why do you need an array of OHS Okay, some particle gate detection? something like that perhaps. and there's a Motorola r MC 10 H-11 6 is these are our line receivers. So yeah, they're obviously receiving stuff from the inputs over here and then are doing some legend or something like that. Look at this: I think I Got a lifetime supply of Ad71 to Precision Jewel Op Amps and they sock it in so you'd most definitely salvaged these from Borla Obviously can't do anything with a board.

You know it's a custom, absolutely custom designed application, but you know. yeah. wind everything socketed like this. you still were these puppies all seven forearm, you know.

ALS Logic and stuff like that. There's the main processor TRW water. basically. I'm so I got no idea.
but yeah, this would have obviously been custom designed for this particle detector application that they need to or don't know how many of these did they make. 10 boards for a rack for some experiment or something like that perhaps. But yeah, Wow if you're curious to see what's on the front, not much. Okay, we have something to do with soon.

So yeah, it's that the I don't know it like old styled experiment stuff at does CERN serial number 25. So as I said, they don't make many of these things and they're all custom and this is an ad MUX to do what? Wow, this is really old-school We've got a Cop 402 process with an E with no sticker other windows, all the electrons are definitely fallen out of that puppy. So yes, I like it. little process.

old-school cop processor. With all this once again with all this detection stuff on the front end here, our fancy pantsy surface mount. Ah, modern rubbish and this is another add marks board. Look at this: Wow all the chips traditionally laid out in your, you know and completely lined up a row configuration like this.

This is where you would use an auto router on something like this. You know it's all digital stuff so it's probably not hugely high-speed except for like the front end stuff and things like that. so you'd let the auto router rip on such a thing and this would be a four layer board. Obviously, you know, power and ground rails in there and then all your traces on the top would all run horizontal or vertical.

Basically, this one looks like it's running horizontal and then all the ones on the other side. Let me flip it over see if I'm telling the truth. Yes, I am telling the truth. They all run vertically.

Look at that. So yep, that's classic case for a typical arm. XY Auto router to just you know you just let that rip. You wouldn't do it by hand, so that's a classic example of that.

I Love the little buds down here. look at there, stay away. and I yeah, we need to trim something. I Look it goes.

Oh boys, go all the way over here. We need to trim something, but we want to get it close to the front. maybe where we can get a screwdriver through and adjust it so they've added that on. It's pretty how you're doing, but they did the business once again.

you didn't You know you couldn't Reese pin this board. you would just hack things together. You need to get the experiment working and it looks like they've done somebody's you know done service. Fancy surface mount stuff for some input front end on this thing so you know we could go in all day and analyze the chips on this puppy.

But yep and then it all goes into the digital section of course. and well, what processes that running? Nothing I think it's just ties in I Mean we've got a massive bus system on the back here. It's just absolutely enormous. We worked Wow all the way with LBJ Now this one's really interesting for two reasons.
One is that looks like it's made by Lacroix So maybe they were are commissioned to do some sort of custom interface. but guess who for US Government Property all know Uncle Sam's going to knock down the door I'm going to be swatted and they're going to want their gear back from the first comes from the Fermi National Accelerator Lab US Government property. Hmm. Anyway, it was in the dumpster.

Once it hits a dumpster, it's fair game. What on earth is a fast Bus segment manager interface? Hmm, it's a Lacroix 1821 Sm1 hmm Oh a SMI and it's got a second board on there as well. It looks like just all low ping count dip packages and all labeled so there's no processor under there. so it obviously goes into some sort of bus system at the back.

now. I've actually heard of the fast bus system before, but I've never really looked into it and it's an I Triple E standard I Triple E 960 Computer Bus Stand Originally intended to replace Quebec in high speed, low scaled data acquisition and to create modular electronics in in particular, data acquisition for particle detectives. That's exactly what we've got here. and these are crate based systems.

These are actually Vme is one of them. Fast Bus Chemic which Fast Bus replaced and an M I've never don't think I've ever heard of once again. Specifically I designed more towards particle accelerators. So it's a 19-inch rack mount system with all these cards and blade processes that plug into this thing.

So obviously La Croix Been you know, a data acquisition specialist. We know how we can make a ton of money designing these plug-in systems. I might have even said even been a being commissioned by the universities the particle detector modest actually design. these are front end cards and things like that.

So there you go. Fast Bus, learn something new every day. Look at this. This would have been a dumpster-diving dream back in the day when you know their chips were expensive and hard to get everything socketed like you would just fill your junk bin with all sorts of logic and stuff.

Yes, look like I can't read those on the LCD screen or the camcorder here, but you just rip them all out, whack them in your junk bin, and Bob's your uncle. Beautiful. These boards would have cost an absolute fortune to design and manufacture and then for some custom purpose. and then they got tossed out.

That's where these physics experiments cost billions of dollars. You know it's somebody. Some groups got a design and engineer and build these things. You know.

Ten of these boards for some experiment to detect something I don't know. Fantastic I Have no idea what an SF Diem is but anyone. Bueller Bueller Bueller It looks like we have a matching Lacroix card the 1881 a DC card. So it's a multi-channel he obviously stands for something.

Hmm, this heat was okay in 2000 apparently property of Uncle Sam and these are all our properties There you get. property of the US government Come and get me. These are all our fast bus. So this is a 64 channel ADC card.
Obviously this is all the digital interface at the back and all the analog gas stuff at the front designed for custom physics experiments like this. You know it's no use to your average engineer. he just wants a multi channel oscilloscope. These are designed for real big high-end system stuffs and they would have cost a boy.

Like how I undo the screws and they just slide and lift off and let's have a look inside. this heat is heap I Love that Xilinx FPGA of ACP all DS and custom Lacroix chip is in here. Ooh there they be custom. Lacroix Adc's I'll see if I can find some data on those Lacroix jobs but yeah it wouldn't be hopeful.

Anyway, this is beautiful. There's the there's the front end of this thing and you know it's not designed to be an oscilloscope or anything. He also is probably just one voltage level, front-end or something like that since all the digital part that interfaces to the bus. We've got some power supply stuff going up here.

But yeah, like lots of our test interfaces and stuff like that, they are. Of course that better be for our dog. That'd be for programming and debugging for sure. And sure enough, you can find data on this thing.

Check it out! Lacroix Corporation has recently announced the new Time to Digital Converter integrated Circuit design for elementary particle and heavy ion physics experiences. TVC The Lacroix MTD One Three Two combines high-density eight channels per monolithic chip, low-power sixty milliwatts per channel on high resolution less than one nanosecond. That's right, a single integrated circuit it's been designed with Drift chamber and Time Projection Chamber applications in mind is the natural next step in the 20-year old long evolution of Lucroy time digital digitizers for particle physics. There you go.

There's a go-to solution. fantastic and worse than 167 megahertz clock on the thing, gray code scaler and all the goodness all linking these down below. So the one we just looked at was an I Triple E paper. Um, this one's actually in a book which is on Google Books They just had this one page.

You know how they skip. You know a bunch of pages in there. At least had this one Once again, it talks about this four high multiplicity, forward spectrometer, drift chamber readout and all sorts. A wonderful experiment you can do with this thing.

sub nanosecond timing. this high resolution multi bit TDC can digitize both leading and trailing edges of pulses so you know, designed for like detectors as the particles go past in the accelerator. Boom-boom-boom You know it basically times the difference between one central. Next I would be guessing and this article actually talks about using this chip in the superconducting Supercollider, which was my hand in 1993 after building nothing like 23 kilometres of tunnels for the damn thing and spending other day.
how many billions of dollars on it? Oops, don't mention the SSC I Swear you could almost frame this although it's kind of I'm sort of almost framed already, but put in a fancy frame and hang this up in some hipster cafe and you could probably sell this thing for a thousand bucks azar. So I'm going to buy it with a cafe latte. Yep, it's from Uppsala University Alright, the said Berg laboratory that area pronounced it started almost Swedish Feels pretty good too. You ready? Hurry Hurry dude.

Now this is a real interesting board. Um, it is. Look at users actual Lockroy chips over here but it wasn't a Badger Lacroix and it seems different to the others so I'm not sure. like did they make a one-off for them and look advanced analog ADC They've got some specific like custom ADC module there so I'm not sure what's going on, but you like like the engineering that's gone into this just for this experiment or to do some you know, research, application or something incredible.

Oh no, it's actually Lacroix it's an 1880s but like why they're using someone else's ADC I Don't know. maybe in the USA once again dumpster divers dream look at this unnecessary conductor LHW Three-two's I think they're discontinued high speed high voltage Op amps and we're gonna SS socketed. We can just lift those out. Winner winner chicken dinner.

And last but not least another Lacroix job here once again - Lacroix our custom 1/6 eye links are CP or D or sub description once again, few mud wires on here. look at that one, well look at that, it's feeding back on itself and most little hack over here. Why is it so long? Do they have to add some extra delay? Maybe to make it so long? Hmm. whatever is going on in here, it's working at 125 Meg Anyway, thankfully data provided that's a Lacroix 1876 RFC made by Uncle Sam himself.

so thank you very much you for saving these classic boards from the dumpster Look like incredible. Fine for anyone. Dumpster diving Like to salvage parts and things like that and you know these things are really hard to come by. You basically have to work at one of these physics labs.

one of these particle accelerators as you does. And sure enough, these things are. Well, they date from the 1990s. I Think most of there might have been one from the 80s or something, but yeah, the experiments all finished that.

Money's all spent, done and dusted or results are being collected. or they've upgraded the systems or whatever. and they toss out these not any tracks. they don't need them anymore.

Tossed out all the cards and everything else and there would have been computers to go along with it. probably. And and you know, tons of other cards. As you said, I think there was like a couple of metric tons of stuff that they actually tossed in the dumpsters.
So real shame. But thankfully we got to take a look at these. It's not every day you get your hands on one of these things. They don't make many of these and if anyone knows how much these things would have cost back in the day, please let us know in the comments because we'd love to find out.

So I Hope you enjoyed that. Look at some classic particle accelerator custom fast bus stuff from Lacroix Awesome! If you liked it, please give it a big thumbs up. and as always, discuss it down below. catch you next time you.


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By YTB

26 thoughts on “Eevblog #994 – cern/fermilab particle accelerator boards!”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars LeoH says:

    Clearly something went seriously wrong at CERN, they've sucked us all into a weird-ass parallel dimension.

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars PushyPawn says:

    Now reverse engineered by China with all other intellectual property stolen too.

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Mike Adler says:

    ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Kennys Boat says:

    Sad that history like this gets thrown out

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars JJ74Q Formerly Jailbreak says:

    Just one of those would keep me mischievous ๐Ÿ˜ for weeks.

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Aged Magister says:

    you is like a god of the computer history stuff!

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Combed Autumn says:

    Not sure it counts as a dumpster dive if you work at the place and new they were thrown in the bin and wanted them. That's just swiping them haha

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Luminociter Fos says:

    Would be a bit careful within components like these. Most of these types of boards are siting in the cave quite close to the experiments an the beam. Over time they get activated and are treated as nuclear waste. Probably the ones you got were just test modules and never got installed, used only for engineering and testing, but donโ€™t go dumpster diving on CERN or Fermilab stuff…. BTW socketed op-amps are there to be swappable in case or rad damage.

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Oscar Anderson says:

    AD712 is like a souped-up TL072. Not a bad op-amp, though certainly not worth $5 each by today's standards.

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Duane Donaldson says:

    If the dumpster was also a US Gov dumpster, then the garbage still belongs to the US Gov until it hits the contractors property or the landfill, then and only then does it become fair game, BEWARED DUMPSTER DIVERS at military bases and the like.

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars TreasureToTrash says:

    SOOOO LUCKY LOOK AT ALL THOSE OPAMPS

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars James Barclay says:

    Absolutely incredible.

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars N0mad Fernan says:

    damn, i like the layout of the board. if i ever had those, ill frame one and hang it on my future home lab

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars James Sun says:

    โ€œWe can analyze these chips all dayโ€
    Please do

  15. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars willis936 says:

    Asset tags are fun to collect. Fermilab is a good find!

    I work in a plasma lab thatโ€™s run on a tight budget. We have a load of those lecroy blades. I canโ€™t imagine theyโ€™re too expensive.

  16. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Crispy K says:

    Imagine getting so much free stuff you don't even realize you got a board from CERN xD

  17. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Spasmomen says:

    Press 8!

  18. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars will2see says:

    Why you make all the awkward noises?

  19. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars TestTubeBabySpy says:

    I have some Fermilab masks, mabe Ill send him some

  20. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars weerobot says:

    How Governments Burn Money..lol

  21. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars David RP says:

    i was waiting for him to say HIII!

  22. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Ronald Figura says:

    My dad used to work as a machinist at a tool & die company in Chicago that made parts for Fermilab.

  23. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Anna Paulinovna says:

    all of weird staff for unnecessary physics experiments. they cant make any new improvement under proton and neutron size. we also using electron quark without cern.

  24. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Charles Wooters says:

    One hell of a find. They look very expensive for their time. I saw them boards come out of the box my eyes got wide and my jaw hot the floor. They are pretty ๐Ÿ˜

  25. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Georgios Leventis says:

    Some notes:
    1) CERN dumpsters that I know are not fair play unfortunately. You are supposed not to take things I think. Though , well…
    2) As these are from the data acquisition part, this probably means that they were pulled from servers from the basements. Which means, well, they are old and stuff, but I would NOT eat, or sleep on them. If you have a Geiger counter check them just to be sure.
    3) As I have been involved into the process, yes custom electronics for the data acquisition departments cost estimates can be really tough. The iWoRid conference is a niche and rare way to find this out.
    4) ouf

  26. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Uwe Zimmermann says:

    apology accepted!

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