Minutes of DRAGON Group Meeting held March 11, 2003

Present: A.Bebington, L.Buchmann, J.D'Auria(chair), S.Engel, D.Gigliotti,
D.Hutcheon, C.Jewett, A.Laird, Z.Li, P.Machule, C.Neish, A.Olin,
D.Ottewell, J.Rogers(minutes), and C.Wrede

1. Minutes of the previous meeting were minorly corrected and returned
to CN.

2. Status of DAQ - JR reported that Midas DAQ is ready for ion chamber
(I.C.) operation. New time-of-flight parameters in the ODB facilitate
changeover to/from I.C. without hardware changes except swapping one ADC
cable. Deadtime with the I.C. is expected to be about 2X worse than with
the DSSSD (reported last meeting).

3. Status of Software - AO and DAH agreed to work to improve the scaling
program.
 JR said the present Analyzer does not sum I.C. anodes. Only Anode vs
Anode 2D arrays are implemented. DAQ has been tested with randoms
between the gamma-array and I.C. pulsed with a 100Hz pulser. DAH reported
that Anode vs A-sum displays are available in Nova.

4. I.C. Window Replacement - A radiation-damaged window on the I.C. will
be replaced by an identical Mylar window, believed to be 55 ug/cm^2
thick.
JR expressed doubt that a self-supporting window could be that thin. CJ
and CW will measure the thickness of the Mylar using alpha particles
from a source and the DSSSD detector in the detector lab.

5. New Elastic Monitor Collimator - JR reported that the old Al front-
collimator was replaced by a thinner Al+Mylar one. Also, the solid angle
was reduced by making the back-collimator a 1/4 inch circle, the same
size as the new front collimator. Also, a provision for biasing the front
collimator to plus or minus 1000v is provided, in hopes of empirically
reducing low-energy backgrounds at high beam-currents.

6. New password - AO reported the addition of a new password to restrict
access to DAQ control from isdaq04. The password is the same as the old
one on midmes01:dragon.