MDM Trouble Report for 2001 May 24

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): Vestergaard (OSU)
Instrument: CCDS

Problem(s) Encountered:
Software problems: Prospero, WC and IC computers and Head
electronics.
At the beginning of the night (at startup) the IE started giving
corrupted data and it didn't respond. Prospero could not be 
restarted and it didn't help to cycle the power on the IE and 
the wc and IC pc's as a persistent error message occured that 
the head electronics didn't respond. Bob was here to help, but 
even he was lost (manual doesn't touch on such a problem either). 
After 1.5 hours of cycling the power on the pc's
and the IE box (west red) Bob tried rebooting chichon, which
seemed to solve THAT problem, only to generate a new one. The
two pc's (wc and ic) refused to synch. WC kept complaining about
not seeing a disk while caliban could see it well (downsynch
refused to come up). It took another 1/2 hour of cycling the
power on the pc's to eventually get it up and running.

As the observer I find it rather unacceptable that the system
is so sensitive and complicated to deal with - and that it takes
so long to recover from any error. Most of the time
none of the maintenance personel is here to help. Also it
seemed a bit random how the system eventually decided to synch
and come up properly. Is it possible to transfer this to a
better (single) computer (instead of the current two-three(?))?
When it works, the CCDS is a very good system and easy to use.
It is frustrating that it is so hard to deal with when it 
doesn't work.

(PS: We tried but could not get hold of Rick Pogge)



------------------------------

Submitted on 2001 May 25 [5:49:50]