Innovative aspects of the SDL control system

The Source Development Lab at BNL consists of a 230 MeV electron linac and 10 m long wiggler for short wavelength FEL development. The control system is based on that in use at the NSLS. Two new extensions of the control system using VXI equipment are described. The first extension is the replacement of patch panels and lab oscilloscopes to monitor RF equipment. Instead, the RF waveforms are fed through a multiplexor into VXI digitizers. The waveforms can then be monitored remotely on any control console. The second extension is the replacement of the analog RF hardware needed to process beam position monitor signals. A digital system based on very fast (sub-nanosecond) VXI waveform digitizers is under development. The difficult operations requiring precise time alignment are then done in software.