Status of the silicon strip high-rate FASTBUS readout system

Our new readout system was developed in collaboration with, and largely to the specification of, the E771 experimenters. E771 is a fixed target experiment designed to study the production of B hadrons by an 800 GeV/c proton beam. The experiment will operate at rates of up to 200 million beam protons per second and 10 million interactions per second. The experimental apparatus will consist of an open geometry magnetic spectrometer featuring good muon and electron identification (much of which was used in E705), and a compact 16000 channel Silicon Strip Detector. In order to satisfy the experimenter's desire to instrument 16000 SSD elements in a package only 5 cm wide, 5 cm high, and 21 cm deep, and in order to meet the performance specifications, we have made extensive use of ''Application Specific Integrated Circuits'' (ASIC's)