Operational experience with a high speed video data acquisition system in Fermilab Experiment E-687

Operation of a high-speed, triggerable, video data acquisition system (VDAS) including a hardware data compactor and a 16-Mb first-in-first-out (FIFO) buffer memory is discussed. Active target imaging techniques for high-energy physics are described, and preliminary experimental data are reported. The hardware architecture for the imaging system and experiment is discussed as well as other applications for the imaging system. Data rates for the compactor are over 30 Mb/s, and the FIFO has been run at 100 Mb/s. The system can be operated at standard video rates or at any rate up to 30 million pixels/s.<
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