CIMA Latest News

Important news about CIMA

This page gives You some important news about CIMA. For more detailed news and information, please, check the various web pages available on the CIMA homepage, especially the ones containing logs and descriptions of current versions.

2 July 2008: CIMA version 2.3 'Unusable' removed

The development version of the next generation of CIMA (called version 2.3 'Unusable') has been removed since the official version (called 3.0 'Next') is available.

12 June 2008: Next generation of CIMA officially installed

The next generation of CIMA called 3.0 'Next' has been officially installed. It replaces the 2.3 'Unusable' version which was used for the development, and users of version 2.3 should switch to 3.0 as soon as possible. Note that You will have to reselect Your preferences since there has been a minor modification to the preference data. Configuration files from version 2.3 will also be reported as 'old' by version 3.0. To upgrade them, make a 'Load and apply' of the old configuration file and then save a new configuration file. Version 2.2 'Normal' is the old version. It has been upgraded to be compatible with modifications to the SCRAMNET broadcasts, WAPP communication and support library modifications and there is thus risks that bugs have been introduced. Apart from urgent bug fixes, all development of version 2.2 has (since long) been terminated. Version 3.0 is the future of CIMA and includes a lot of modifications and improvements. The improvements come with a price though: catalog files may need updating, command file syntax has changed and old configuration files can't be used - new ones have to be created with the new version. All observers are encouraged to migrate over to version 3.0, which will become the default version very soon, but do try it out off-line BEFORE getting on to the telescope to get familiar with it. The old version will be kept on-line for at least 6 months, maybe longer, to give all observers plenty of time to move over to the new version. Remember that You always can try out the new 3.0 version in off-line mode to see how it works. Some web pages have been updated to contain information on version 3.0 (2.3): the source catalog page, the preferences page, the configuration file page and the command file page.

7 December 2007: CIMA WAPP software, CIMAFITS and WAPP pulsar header upgrade

A new version of the CIMA WAPP software has been installed which enables the WAPPs to run in 'dual board mode', where the two boards of each WAPP is used as an individual spectrometer or pulsar machine, thus allowing the WAPPs to cover up to 800 MHz bandwidth compared to 400 MHz in single board mode. As a result of this upgrade, the WAPP pulsar headers had to be upgraded to include extra information about the dual board mode. There has also been some bug fixes both to WAPP pulsar headers as well as to the CIMAFITS headers. Most of the bug fixes only affects engineering parameters, but one serious bug has been found and corrected which involves the automatic power adjustment in single polarization mode for the 'B' channel, which did not work properly. Observers that have been taking data with the WAPPs in single polarization pol-B mode either in spectral line or in pulsar mode should be aware that their data may be corrupted due to the fact that too little or too much power was going into the WAPPs during the observation. This bug has been in the system all the time up until now.

20 February 2007: Mailing list for CIMA news

A mailing list for distributing news about CIMA modifications and bug fixes have been set up. Anyone interested in receiving such news about CIMA, can sign up to this mailing list by sending an email with the word "subscribe" in the header to 'cima-news-request@naic.edu'. If You wish to subscribe using a different address, You can write "subscribe address=xxx@yyy.zzz" in the header.

General information for CIMA users

These are a few recommendations to CIMA users:

Check the CIMA web pages regularly before Your observing sessions so that You are aware of any changes made to CIMA.
Use the current CIMA versions page and the CIMA user's log page to decide which version of CIMA You want to use. Newer versions (indicated by a higher version number) usually provide new features, more functionality and fixes to old bugs. However, there is, of course, always a risk that some new bugs have been introduced, which is the reason why old versions are kept available.
If You find a newer version unsuitable or unusable for Your project, please, inform the CIMA administrator (Mikael Lerner) about Your problems or concerns so that the newer version can be fixed. Staying with an old version should be seen as a short-term solution.
Don't forget that You can familiarize Yourself with CIMA and test out many things by running CIMA off-line from basically any computer at the observatory. Don't be afraid of hitting any buttons --- CIMA will simulate some action for You when run in off-line mode, but it will NEVER send any commands to the telescope, the receivers or the back-ends.
Run CIMA in off-line mode once before starting a new project at the telescope. This will allow You to check that You have a proper project directory set up for You (the project number should stay black in the CIMA start-up window --- red numbers indicate that the directory is missing). It will also save You a minute or two of telescope time, since CIMA is going to ask You for some preference choices the very first time You start up a new project. You can also set up the IF/LO path as well as the back-end configuration and save them to a configuration file which You can use during Your observation.
Remote observers are recommended to use VNC since it faster and more reliable. See the remote observing instructions for details on how to use VNC.

All CIMA software is run from '/home/cima/bin'. Most software needed by the normal user like 'cima' itself or the 'alfadatawin' WAPP spectral line quick-look display have been set-up with links in '/usr/local/bin' so that the user should not have to bother about remembering the path. However, some software parts intended to be used mainly by the staff need to be called directly from the '/home/cima/bin' directory.

All WAPP spectral line data is accessible in the directory '/share/wappdata'. Avoid using names to specific disks like '/share/pserverf.sda3/wappdata' since they may change without warning.