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The electromagnetic calorimeter of the CMS experiment at CERN is an homogeneous calorimeter made of about 80000 Lead Tungstate crystals, that will start to operate at the LHC at the end of 2007. From June to November 2006, ten barrel Supermodules (1700 crystals each) were exposed to beam at CERN SPS, both in standalone and in association with portions of the Hadron Calorimeter. We present the description of the system used to configure and readout the calorimeter during the campaign. The full set of final readout electronics boards was employed, together with the pre-series version of the data acquisition software. During the campaign, the hardware and software concepts for the final system were validated. The system allowed the intercalibration of the ten Supermodules and allowed to perform several important studies of the detector performances, such as energy resolution, response linearity and radiation-hardness.

The CMS experiment uses information from its electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters and muon detectors to decide whether to readout the whole detector. For such a task to be successful, all trigger primitives pushed through the trigger decision tree must be flawlessly aligned in time for operation at 40 MHz. Both calorimeters in CMS use the Synchronization Link Board for this purpose. In this article we report on the results of tests of this board using realistic beam conditions, which demonstrate the soundness of the adopted architecture and synchronization principle.