Microprocessor-based control facility of the He refrigerator system used in the 1000 GeV Fermilab switchyard

Because of Fermilab's early commitment to computer control and monitoring, several very large control systems have evolved. The continually expanding size of these systems has begun to tax some of the central computers almost to their limits. The control and monitoring requirements of the refrigeration system were of such a nature that distributed processing became an attractive way to alleviate the overloading of the central computer that the helium liquefier would have presented. A description is given of the hardware and software that were necessary to implement the distributed processing concept