The UH IfA NeXTStep CCD System User's Manual

This appendix lists most of the important changes that occurred with each release of the program described here.

• release 4.00-4.09

  Not released for general use. Do not use releases 4.00 through 4.09 unless you know what you are doing

• release 3.07

  Final clean-up before general release. Released to the users 09/01/94. Added debugging mode buttons.

• release 3.06

  This was given a limited release. Long exposures no longer require confirmation. This release continued the work that was begun in releases 3.04 and 3.05. Most of these changes were fixes for bugs that were generated in 3.04 and 3.05.

• release 3.05

  This was not released for general use. This was another test release, continuing the work on release 3.04. More work was done on improving reliability and reducing readout time for small subframes. The SAFE button (added in 3.04) was renamed to SLOW to prevent confusion with the SAVE button. The count-down window was reworked to make it easier to interrupt looping with short exposures.

• release 3.04

  This was not released for general use. This release was primarily to improve performance and to fix bugs. Performance has been improved by an order of magnitude, especially for small subframes. The hardware-control subroutines have been completely rewritten to be safer, faster, and more efficient. The program no longer crashes the system when run for extended periods of time, and no longer wastes memory. Readout rates have been improved considerably. The SAFE check-box has been added. When this is disabled, the data stream is not checked for synchronization; previously the stream was always checked. This option is useful for rapid readout, but should not be disabled for normal operation. In LOOP mode, (the no-SAVE option will no longer keep backup files except for the final exposure. The secondary display windows may be disabled by disabling the auto update check-box; this may be used to maximize the display rate. It is now possible to print any window, using the print command on the main menu. Note that this gives somewhat poorer image quality, but is much faster. The cursor is now drawn properly when the image is flipped. The count-down window now stops reliably for short exposures.

• release 3.03

  The purpose of this release was to fix a few major bugs. When a readout fails, the partial frame is now written to disk. When the first attempt to download fails, the software will retry automatically, before giving up. The plot display did not always update correctly when switching between row and column plots; this has been fixed. The time-out period for the TCS function has been extended; hopefully this will get rid of (harmless) intermittent failures to read information from the TCS.

• release 3.02

  This was the first public release of release 3. It fixed the shutter-timing problem and made the sub-frame set up more reliable.

• release 3.01

  This was a test release, and was never released to the users. Most of the changes were bug fixes.

• release 3.00

  This was a test release, and was never released to the users. Massive changes occurred between releases 2.07 and 3.00; the more important changes follow. The spectroscopy and photometry tools were implemented; they are not fully functional, but are workable. The software checks to see if the data line is functional, before beginning any operation, which makes the system less likely to hang. It is now possible to set sub-frames and binning dynamically, from within the user interface. Readout has been improved to be faster. Information is read from the telescope control system and stored in the data header. Exposures are now permitted to be specified in tenths of seconds. It is now possible to set the look-up table for the main window from the zoom window.

• release 2.07.01

  This was an emergency release to support a different analog board.

• release 2.07

  The active region of the display is now set in a way that makes it easier to resize the windows. The aspect ratio is always correct. The controls for the main display window have been moved into a separate window in order to make it easier to resize the main display arbitrarily. The cursor position in the zoom window and in the values window is now slaved to the cursor position in the main window.

• release 2.06

  The display was changed to insure that the aspect ratio was always correct. Several files have been provided to permit sub-frame readout. (These files will someday be replaced by a more convenient interface.) The statistics window now works. There is a new window that permits the user to see numeric values of a region of the ccd. The interruptible expose mode is now believed to be reliable.

This document was written by Hubert Yamada (yamada@ifa.hawaii.edu) and Kevin Jim (kjim@terrasys.com).