Progress of HIRFL Control System
Huang Xinmin, and Chu Zhensheng
Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
P.O.Box 31, Lanzhou 730000,China5Abstract
The HIRFL control system is a distributed one based on
the high grade PCs, workstations and servers. The system
consists of SFC control station, SSC power control station,
SSC beam diagnosis station, SSC vacuum station and RFcontrol station. Each control station is an independent
subsystem and a high speed network is used tocommunicate between control stations. The application
programs that are used to control equipment are written inC or C++ and linked into a DDL (dynamic linking library)which is called by standard windows' applications. The
operating interface is programmed in OOP programming
language C++ or VB and run under Windows/95 Chineseversion (next: Windows/NT ).
The system was built in 1996. The applications used incontrol stations have been finished and the system software
designing is in progress. Entire control system is going tobe finished in the end of 1997.
1 System description
A centralized control system had been used in HIRFL forsome years. It was only used to control SSC power supplies
and used a VAX/8350 computer as center control machine.
The computer had some trouble in some years and thespare parts are very difficult to buy since VAX/8350 is oldtype. In order to insure the accelerator operating, we havedecided to rebuild the system.
A new control system for HIRFL is rebuilding. It is basedon a high grade PC workstation and server and a DCS
control system. Fig.1 shows the control system network.
It is a two level control architecture. The upper levelconsists of Central Manage Workstation, server(CMW),
Local Control Workstations(LCW) and a high speed
network, 100M, is used to interconnect them. The Local
Control Workstations (LCW) consist of ECR Ion Source
Control Workstation(ECR-CW), SFC, injector, Control
Workstations(SFC-CW), SFC Diagnosis Workstation(SFCDW), Technical Control Workstation (TCW), Radio
Frequency Control Workstations(RFCW), SSC Power
Supply Control Workstations(SSC-PSCW), SSC Diagnosis
Workstation(SSC-DW)
andVacuumControlWorkstation(VCW). The lower level consists of CAMAC
series loops which were used to control equipment.
2 Hardware upgrade
The computers that were used to control equipment wereIBM PC/XT, 286 and IBM PC/AT. The old computers arevery difficult to run a high speed network. So we change
them to HP Pentium 586/200 workstation and server.

3 Computer network
The HIRFL computer network in HIRFL control system
is a Fast Ethernet. The Inter express 100M 12 port
stackable HUBs are used in the network. The 3COM's
3C905 100M PCI network adapter is used in each PC
workstation and the AMP type 5 cable is used tointerconnect between PC workstation and HUB. In order
to insure transport correct, the Max distance is limited
90M.
4 Software rebuilding
4. 1 Application programs in LCWApplications in LCW are written in C or C++. Allsubroutines have a uniform format, such as subroutinename (input parameter 1, input parameter 2,outputparameter 1,output parameter 2). All the subroutines arelinked ,in C++ V4.5 development kit, into a Dynamic Link
Library, naming as ECR_CON.DLL for ECR control,
SFC_CON.DLL for SFC control, SSC_CON.DLL for SSC
power supply control, RF_CON.DLL for RF control,
SFC_DIA.DLL for SFC Diagnosis, SSC_DIA.DLL for
SSC Diagnosis and VAC.DLL for vacuum control andmonitor. All DLLs are stored under the windows/system
sub-directory and are called by The Man Machine Interface(MMI) at run time.
4.2 MMI software
The MMI for the control system is a standard Microsoft
Windows interface ,programming in visual basic V4.0 andvisual C++. It runs under the Windows/95 Chinese version
and is operated by a mouse. The multimedia technique isused in the control system to provide the on-line voice help
and the equipment operating state information.
5 Control room
There are two control rooms in HIRFL control system,
SFC control room (injector control room) and SSC controlroom. The SFC control room can independently operate inorder to extract Ion beam to experiment. There are 3-4 20inch high resolution color displays located on the SFCcontrol desk and 4 20-inch high resolution color displays
located on the SSC control desk.
6 Status and future
The hardware rebuilding in HIRFL has finished.
Application programs in LCW have completed and havebeen used to control equipment. The MMI software has
finished and runs under Windows/95.
Many new programming technique, such as OOP, OLE,

DDE, DLL and so on, has been used and a very friendly
user interface, GUI, has been supplied (Fig.2). Thecomputer network is running very well. Next step, we will
write the CAMAC common subroutine under LAN'senvironment. The severs are going to put into use and thesever/client construction will be realized. A new powerful
database DB2 or ORACLE will be adopted in HIRFL.
Multimedia technique have improved the control system .

Fig.2 The User Interface on SFC-CW