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Status of FE-chip production with DMILL (W. Dabrowski):
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A version for analog (SCT-A) resp. binary (SCT-B) readout is in production.
A small series delivery is expected for jan. 97; results will be known by
end-of-february. The analog and the binary chip comprise 128 channels each.

The ABC backend will be added to the SCT-B if the prototype works correctly.
An engineering run (MATRA) with 6 wafers (6 inch) will then be submitted by
april 97, which is expected to yield several hundred chips. If everything
goes well, a sufficient number of good chips will be available for the
summer-test of Si-detectors.

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Comment from Alex to availibility of FE-chips in 1997:
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Concerning the FE electronics, I hope that there will be sufficient
chips from the present SCT128B fabrication to get some into this
summer's beam test.  That will allow a good comparison of the
SCT128B along with the CAFE/CDP128.  And the SCT128B was designed
with the same backend protocol to facilitate that.  I believe Oslo
is now designing a hybrid for this purpose.

The submissions to Maxim and Honeywell for CAFE-M and ABC are
slipping but hopefully we will have chips for the summer's beam
test.  We have ordered 6 wafers of each to provide chips for both
barrel and forward module development.  The collaboration will
have to decide how to divide up the chips.  And then this will
be followed by the DMILL version.

The point I'm trying to make is that there are actually 4 sets of
chips coming at different times and all should be tested in some
fashion on modules:

        CAFE/CDP128     available now in existing modules for testing
        LBIC/CDP128    still availble for modules
        SCT128B         availabe feb or march
        CAFE-M/ABC      available may or june
        SCTB (or ABCD I'm not sure what name people like)  aug or sept

Of couse this represents a lot of work to get all into modules and
I'm not sure how many different types of modules we need but at
least the barrel and one forward version would be a good idea.

regards,
Alex