Re: MIKE is Alive

[Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com>]

Mike and all,

That is just great news.  Especially since everything here in Chicago is 
dead.

If you have not done so already, I suggest taking some darks when the room 
the Mark IV is in is pretty dark.  You can tell if you have good images by 
the border pixels.  If you take a 100 or so second dark frame with the 
cameras at +10 C or so you will get the "Michael Richmond" multiple noise 
peaks.  The 100 second exposure will also get you nice cosmic 
rays.  Between the two of these things you can be pretty sure the cameras 
are working properly.  Dark level will be about -25,000 counts.

I have been checking out boards.  Finally I think I am pretty sure I have a 
sick check out computer.  The problem is that sometimes it works.  So I put 
a new board in my test set up and it may or may not work in some random 
way.  This was hell until I got a set of boards that I know work.  Now with 
a good board set I can go back and test computers.  I am beginning to run 
out of ISA socket computers that I know work.

Tom Droege

At 04:36 PM 8/11/01 -0400, you wrote:
>MIKE arrived here last Sunday and I have succeeded in putting all parts and
>connectors back in the right places.  I have tested as much as I can and it
>seems the motor all work and the memory card works etc.  Nice job Tom!  It's
>not hard to put the system together reliably.
>
>Now I need to put together a platform and enclosure so I can start seeing
>stars.
>
>
>Mike G.
>