If you have reached the physical limit of 20 degrees above the horizon, the drive motors will shut off automatically. Also, the dome begins to rotate continuously. To get restarted, first and most important, find out what you did wrong and correct that. It could be that you have reset the coordinates completely wrong, and then tried to slew to what would have been a reasonable place, but which was rendered impossible to achieve by the zero point mistake. Once you know what you did wrong, go out to the telescope and gently push on the top ring in an upwards direction until the motors re-engage. You can now slew the telescope by hand till it is in a reasonable position. You might have to "unpanic" the TCS computer by hitting F10, F9, F10. (Directions are also on the display screen.)
If that doesn't work, it is probably necessary to kill off irtcs
and start over. Go to the window where you started irtcs, type
jobs to find its job number, then type kill -HUP
%1, using the actual job number in place of the "1." Then type
ipcs and make sure there are no message queues or shared
memory segments still in use. If there are, try rmseg and
then ipcs again. If this doesn't work, kill the camera
program (die in the dark window on stelircam), then
rmseg and then ipcs yet again. If this doesn't
work, it's probably necessary to reboot flwo48 and start over. If you
do that, you might as well go through the whole
telescope startup
routine again.
If no success, go out to the dome and turn the offending filter knob
about a quarter turn by hand. You can tell which knob is which
because the motor mount is anodized in the corresponding color. Then
try filterinit again. If that doesn't work, try moving by
hand a larger amount, say a couple of turns, then initializing yet
again. The initialization routine is pretty good, but there seem to
be a few starting locations that throw it off.
To get going again, first try filterinit as above. If
that doesn't work, you can move the filter knob a very small amount
by hand until the light goes on. You will need two people to do
this; one to move the knob and another to watch the light.
If all else fails, you can use the pupil viewer to check the
filter positions. This is tedious, and you will not wish to move the
filters very often during the night. Still, it's better than losing
a night.
If the initialization doesn't work, try turning the lens knob by
hand. The lens motor is the one in the gold colored mount. If you
are correctly set in wide field, the knob should turn clockwise about
half a turn before meeting resistance. (Don't force it!) Turn it
counter-clockwise about two turns from the resistance point, then
initialize again.
When the lens knob is turned fully clockwise, one of the green
lights on the controller should go out. This means you have hit the
limit switch, which is fine. Just make sure you are well off the
limit before trying to initialize. In normal operation, the limit
switches should never be hit, and both of the lower green lights
should stay on.
No guarantees, but this is most likely a problem with the remote
transceiver, a device needed to send the keyboard, screen, and mouse
information over the distance from the control room to the computer
room.
First, check the mouse wire and make sure it's plugged in.
Second, notice that the mouse plugs into a small box, which has a
power supply also connected. At the other end of the power supply
cord is a black, cubical transformer. First try unplugging the mouse
D-connector from the box and plugging it back in. If that doesn't
work, try unplugging the transformer
from the wall and plugging it back in. Never unplug the power
supply at the box end! Then try unplugging the mouse once more.
If this doesn't work, you will have to power off stelircam and
restart. If you can (i.e. if the mouse cursor is in a shell window),
shutdown the computer by typing "shutdown -h now," and wait 30
seconds or so for the shutdown to finish. Then in the computer room,
open the front panel on stelircam, which is near the back wall and in
a black, rack-mount box. Turn power off. Then, back in the control
room, unplug the transformer as above, and plug it back in. Finally,
turn stelircam power back on and wait for it to boot.
If all this doesn't work, there may be a hardware problem.
Either phone for help, or just run with all windows on flwo48.
Camera Problems
If the XUI shows "Error" instead of "OK" for RedFilter or BluFilter,
it means that the filters have not initialized properly or have
gotten lost. The first thing to do is to initialize again. Type in
the Command line:
filterinit 0 for red or filterinit 1 for blue.
The filter controller chassis has four green lights; in normal
operation, all four should be on. If one of the top two lights is
off (when the filters are not moving), it means the filter is not at
the correct position. This indicates a hardware problem, which
should be reported.
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