First Experiences Integrating PC Distributed I/O Into Argonne's ATLAS Control System

∗ Undergraduate Research Participants Abstract The roots of ATLAS (Argonne Tandem-Linac Accelerator System) date back to the early 1960’s. Located at the Argonne National Laboratory, the accelerator has been designated a National User Facility, which focuses primarily on heavy-ion nuclear physics. Like the accelerator it services, the control system has been in a constant state of evolution. The present real-time portion of the control system is based on the commercial product Vsystem [1]. While Vsystem has always been capable of distributed I/O processing, the latest offering of this product provides for the use of relatively inexpensive PC hardware and software. This paper reviews the status of the ATLAS control system, and describes first experiences with PC distributed I/O.