New components of the MIDAS data acquisition system

The MIDAS data acquisition system has been successfully used in many small and medium scale experiments at TRIUMF and PSI under various operating systems. Since its initial release in '97, several new components have been added. A dedicated HTTP server allows experiment control through any Web browser. A Java interface has been added to allow a platform-independent graphical experiment control and monitoring. A general-purpose Java control program using the SWING widgets can be extended with MIDAS Java Beans to suit experiment specific needs. Beans currently exist for time-over-value plots, for run control and as an interface to the MIDAS slow control system. Other new components are a background logger and a general purpose alarm system. Unified driver libraries have been written to allow operating system independent access to CAMAC, FASTBUS and VME. Several slow control drivers have been added, including an EPICS channel access interface.