The performance of the FADC system for the ZEUS Central Tracking Detector

The Central Tracking Detector (CTD) of the ZEUS experiment uses a flash analogue to digital converter (FADC) readout system to measure the arrival time of ionisation at sense wires as well as the charge deposited. A digitisation frequency of 104 MHz is used and the data is written to pipelined data stores. A digital signal processor (DSP) is used to control the main functions on the card as well as perform data parameterisation and compression. Test and operational performance results from the first electron-proton interactions are presented. >