Summary of control and data acquisition systems for Nova based inertial confinement studies

The Nova Laser has completed its first year of operation. During this period, emphasis has been placed on activation of the facility and of the numerous target and beam diagnostics. Two separate target chambers are in use. Nova operation is separated into two broad functions: laser operations and experiments. The operations group provides the laser system control, operation and data acquisition and the experiments group provides experiment definition, diagnostic instrumentation and overall data processing. This paper reports on the overall Operations side. VAX 11/780 computers are used to set up diagnostic operating parameters and collect data recorded by the CAMAC and CCD modules. These data are delivered in files by electronic link to the laser experiments and analysis facility (LEAF) VAX 11/785 of the experiments group for processing. Film data are digitized at LEAF and the film data files also processed on the LEAF VAX