MDM Trouble Report for 2006 Jun 14

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): Thorstensen (Dartmouth)
Instrument: echelle direct + 2 in FW

Problem(s) Encountered:
Several problems:

(a) Around midnight, the power dropped out for maybe two seconds
-- ordinarily not a problem, but the UPS power went too, so
absolutely everything went down.  I got back on the air without
any special difficulty, but it took about half an hour all told.
So, evidently, the UPS has become an IPS (interruptible power 
supply).

(b) I had several episodes of asynchronous read errors -- these
come in clusters, and when they happen they tend to persist for
a while.  I hit reset multiple times, cycled the power on the 
fiber-optic interface box, and typed  sync  repeatedly -- 
sometimes these worked, sometimes they didn't, which makes me 
think that none of these get at the cause.  The last cluster
occurred during morning sky flats; since I had enough flats,
I eventually just gave up.

(c) Low-exposure images are showing some kind of pickup.  This
may hae become more noticable after the power glitch, or perhaps
that was just a coincidence.

(d) Finally, the filter wheel at one point was off-step - I
noticed this because the images didn't look appropriate for
their passbands.  Initializing xmis fixed it.

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Submitted on 2006 Jun 15 [5:28:35]