Wire scanner news from the CERN-SPS

Wire scanners have been used successfully to measure the transverse beam profiles of proton and antiproton beams in the CERN-SPS for about one decade. More recent developments of the wire scanner system are reported here: (a) since electrons and positrons are accelerated in the SPS for LEP injection the detection system of a wire scanner was modified and the instrument was used to measured lepton bunch profiles. (b) For the measurement of beam profiles of the high intensity proton beam in fixed target physics a limit was found for the beam intensity which the fibre can support without damage caused by heating. This allows the use of the wire scanners to measure the profiles at maximum beam energy and intensity without the risk of destroying the fibre. (c) With the development of high precision wirescanners for the SPS comes the need for a better data acquisition system. The new scanners will generate more data (up to 32K per scan) compared to the old wire scanners and will be driven from electronics residing in a VME system. Here the authors report about a prototype data acquisition system housed in a VME crate and connected to the operator consoles via the new (token ring) network. 5 refs., 5 figs., 1 tab