A compact and flexible CCD readout-system

A compact and flexible low noise control- and readout-system has been developed for a X-ray pnCCD operation. The pnCCD is a new type of CCD originally developed for applications in space for X-ray astronomy. It is designed to perform extremely fast, high resolution spectroscopy of photons in the soft X-ray and infrared region with high efficiency. All interesting parameters of the new readout system like pulse-sequencing and power-up and -down are completely controlled by a front-end system with the help of hardwired interpreters getting their programs from a supervising PC. For adaptation of other CCD devices and optimisation, these parameters can be changed interactively by the PC operator. Coupling of the front-end system to the computer is done via a fiber optic link with PCI bus-interface. A menu driven, interactive program system under Linux serves for generation of timing sequences, experiment setup, visualisation and data storage. The system allows an image repetition rate of up to 220 frames/s which is limited only by the pnCCD readout speed.