Datatape LP-400 Digital Cassette Recorder

The Caltech Computational Astronomy group has developed a High-Speed Data Acquisition System for the study of radio pulsars. A key part of the system is a Datatape Inc. LP-400 digital cassette recorder which writes at sustained rates of up to 400 Mbit/s using ANSI D1 format 19-mm cassettes.

Our group uses one recorder as an aquisition device; the other is attached to the 512-node Intel Paragon supercomputer at Caltech, for reading data. The system was field-tested at Caltech's Owens valley Radio Observatory 40-m telescope in 1994. The first scientific deployment of the system was to Parkes Observatory, Australia, in July 1995. A total of approx 10 Tbtye of data were recorded; some initial results on PSR 0437-4715 have been published. Anaysis of the Parkes data continues.

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Updated Sep 21, 1996