The status and prospects of the control system of an accelerator test facility for linear colliders

KEK has proposed to build an accelerator test facility (ATF) capable of producing a 2.5 GeV electron beam for the purpose of stimulating R&D for linear colliders in the TeV region. The ATF consists of a 1.54 GeV S-band linear accelerator, a 1.54 GeV damping ring and a 1.0 GeV X-band linear accelerator. The ATF project will be carried out in three phases. In phase I and phase II the S- and X-band linacs will be constructed, respectively, and in phase II the damping ring will be completed. The construction of ATF phase I has started, and the 0.3 GeV S-band injector linac is almost complete. The heart of the control system for the phase-I linac is based on two microVAX systems. At present these computers are connected to the KEK network (Ethernet). A CAMAC-enhanced byte-serial highway extends to the controlled equipment. Optical-fiber cables are used for the serial CAMAC highway in order to obtain high reliability in a noisy environment. The transmission rate on each optical fiber in 5 Mbyte/s. In this paper we present the status of the control system of the phase-I linac and the design of the computer control system for the ATF.