The on-ground acquisition and data analysis system for the PDS detector on board the SAX satellite

The Phoswich Detection System (PDS) is the high-energy (15-300 keV) instrument on board the Italian-Dutch X-ray astronomy satellite SAX. Functional tests were carried on at BICRON (Newbury, Ohio, USA) and at LABEN (Vimodrone, Italy). Full ground calibrations have been performed between the end of 1994 and the beginning of 1995. We describe in the following the system that we used to acquire and analyse the data coming from the PDS experiment during the ground tests and calibrations. It will be used to store and maintain data during both the pre-operational and the operational phases. In a previous report (DAL FIUME D., FRONTERA F., ORLANDINI I M. and TRIFOGLIO M., AIP Conf. Proc., 61 (1994) 395) we described the general architecture of the data analysis system. In this report we give a detailed description of the entire system, including the hardware and software developed by LABEN to acquire data during on-ground tests. A complete description of the different modules, user interface, inter-process communications, analysis and display tools are presented. Current status of the project is discussed.