VxWorks support for Collider Run II data acquisition at Fermilab

Summary form only given. Detector commissioning for Collider Run II at Fermilab is currently scheduled for April 2000. Substantial data acquisition upgrades are underway for both collider detectors (CDF and DZero), including the extensive use of PowerPC-based single board computers running the VxWorks real-time OS (a proprietary product of Wind River Systems). Support for VxWorks on these processors has been a rocky road, but the outcome has been satisfactory. We also continue to support 68K-based boards used by fixed target experiments currently running (eg, KTeV) and by detector development test stands (eg, SVX). This paper discusses some of the difficulties encountered, and the methods of their resolution. There are two areas of support under the umbrella of VxWorks: the host development environment, and the target board support packages (BSPs). The chief obstacle to supporting the development environment was that WRS does not support either of the Unix host systems that are most common among experimenters here, namely, IRIX and Linux; and there were a number of problems with the BSPs for the PowerPC boards.