Instrument Problems

• No signal. Mirror covers, dome in the way, GAM or pickoff mirror in front of instrument or dark slide closed. If a star is visible on TV it cannot be visible in the instrument. Check to make sure the Lyot stop is correct for the telescope and that the three filter wheels are in proper positions. In particular it is possible to have filter combinations that completely block each other (a K filter plus a narrow band 1.094 m filter for example). Check that the proper Lyot stop is in (?filter. If the f/30 stop is being used with an f/8 secondary you would only see the central obstruction of the telescope. Check status s for proper temperatures, voltages. Check that red LED on analog electronics box is lit. If the detector has been accidently deactivated, program will not sense this. observe will work, but will return pixel values near zero in image.
• Apparent vignetting. The motors were not properly initialized. Try to reinitialize the the filter motors first (fwinit). If this does not work try to reinitialize the Lyot stop (lyotinit). Note that you will need to set and then adjust the Lyot stop by jogging.
• System hangs during startwf. If it hangs at ``Bootstraping node C004'' it is probably because the there is not a proper link to the DSP box from the SUN. Check the connection to the BO11 board in the Sun also check that the proper Kernal has been executed during the bootup of the SUN. Power down the DSP and reboot the sun as discribed on page 21 under ``Restart after Heurikon DSP box power interruption''. You should watch for two messages during the bootup that tell you the B011 procresses have been started. If the system hangs at ``Bootstraping node 100'' it is probably a fiber communication problem. Check that the fibers are properly connected (i.e. transmit to recieve and receive to transmit) and clean. Once the fibers have been checked it is best to do a full restart powering down the DSP and rebooting the sun.
• No motor control. Verify that the motor control box and the instrument motor driver box are powered up. Verify that the serial line from port B on the Sun is connected to the motor control box. Verify that the proper initmtr command for the motor control box being used has been executed. Should be contained in the /usr/wfire/tcl/CIRIM/initInst.tcl file or it can be run from the command window at anytime. Power down the motor controller and MUX box and check the connections.
• System hangs on TCP commands. Verify, that serial port A on the Sun computer is connected via an RS-232 cable to the TSC computer. At the 1.5m make sure it is connected to the ``German'' speak port on the TCS.
• Bad images. At times (about once a week), for reasons we do not understand one quadrant of the array (usually the upper right) will become very noisy or the entire bias level of the array will shift a large amount. This produces images that are either very positive or negative. If this occurs you can try killing WFIRE and powering down just the instrument. Then power up the system again following the instructions under ``Totally Stalled System Restart'' on page 21. This sometimes does not work and a full restart including powering down the Heurikon DSP box and rebooting the Sun computer will be needed (see instructions under ``Restart After Heuricon DSP Box Power Interruption'' page 22).
• XIMTOOL Collisions. If two tasks try to communicate with an IRAF image display device at exactly the same instant they will collide and potentially kill the ximtool and hang the processes. This is not a major catastophy and should not require a system restart but be careful, only display images or use imexamine when the data system is not about to display an image. Alternatively, turn off the auto display type display none in the command window. If they do crash first stop any more images from being displayed (i.e. stop the focus movie). You will then have to make sure the ximtool is dead by typeing ps -aux | grep ximtool. If it still lives kill it kill nnnn. Now restart a new ximtool or saoimage. This collision may also leave imexamine in a highly confused state. You can try to heal it by typing the usual flpr commands in the iraf window. If this does not work kill the iraf window and start a new on.