Software techniques for the aquisition of optical data from a minicomputer-based image-intensifier-vidicon system

The software required to support a new data acquisition technique which can acquire large amounts of optical data in a short time period has been developed. The data acquisition system incorporates an image intensifier and vidicon tube in combination and is controlled by a minicomputer utilizing the described software. The software handles all control of the image-intensifier-vidicon system, acquires the data from the system, and stores the data for subsequent retrieval and reduction. The software incorporates a disk operating system for a single floppy disk drive. This disk operating system utilizes a specially designed technique that optimizes the rate of writing data onto the disk.

The system was implemented to acquire temperature and density data from the flow of a rocket engine exhaust plume. This application coupled the system with an electron beam mechanism to acquire the data using an electron beam fluorescence technique and was used to verify that the system meets the requirements set forth for it.