MDM Trouble Report for 2006 Feb 9 Telescope: 1.3m Observer(s): Bentz and Denney (OSU) Instrument: CCDS Problem(s) Encountered: The beginning of the night was lost to bad weather. When the weather started clearing up, we then lost a lot of time to equipment difficulties. It began when the instruments stopped talking to each other when we were attempting to take an arc. Restarting prospero didn't help, so we shut down caliban and prospero, and in the end had to do a completely fresh boot. Unfortunately, that section of the users manual hadn't been updated since the computers were changed over. So we tried every combination of startup procedures we could think of until we got the correct (?) order, or at least something that worked. We are working on a new version to tape into the users manual over the collection of older versions there now for future reference. At this point the grating decided to get completely lost. Even though it said that it was centered at 4250 A, the lines didn't make any sense when comparing to line lists. After much furious flipping of pages in the manuals, I happened to recognize a certain pattern of lines at 9300 A, which is where our grating was actually centered (and yes, we did set the order to 1). Once the grating was told where it was and where it was supposed to go, we had our next issue. We couldn't find any stars in either the slit viewer or the guide camera, which was disturbing because whatever computer and instrument issues we may have had earlier, we didn't think these two should be affected. Everything was open, the dome was not occulting the telescope, and there weren't any mirrors blocking the beam path. It turns out that both the telescope and the guider were a few hundred steps out of focus, washing all stars into the background and turning the very brightest into huge donuts. Luckily we found one of the giant celestial pastries, because I could walk outside and see the stars, but the telescope sure seemed blind. With a focused telescope and communicating instruments, then, we finally began our science observing around 12:30 or so. Later issues involved rebooting the guider computer after it freaked out (printing the same thing on the screen over and over as if a keyboard button was stuck down). We also had issues with a very jumpy telescope with wind speeds of only 5-10 mph. Perhaps it was the particular location (RA 11 hours, Dec +72 degrees), but it was bad enough to lose guiding occasionally. Luckily no mechanical issues. However, on the way up from Tucson, the check engine light was on in the van. I forgot to mention it earlier, but it may be a problem you're aware of already. At the end of the night, while taking end calibrations, we lost communication with the instruments again (error message Warning: Instrument Electronics Not Responding ). Had to completely restart and reboot everything again. Grating got lost at ~9300 A again. Ran xwave, newcenter, then tried centering at 4250 again. Arc looked like the one you will see on the screen: as if something is stuck in the beam or moving. Attempt to change slit size (thought might be stuck in the beam in some funny way) timed out. We give up. We are tired and don't want to do a third cold start tonight. We left prospero and caliban running so you could see the error messages and the funny images. ------------------------------ Submitted on 2006 Feb 10 [7:17:28] NOTE: This trouble report replaces the previous report for 2006 Feb 9