Testing

Testing of the NCCS must be done in parallel with normal operations in order not to interfere with observing. The best way of achieving this is to simulate all hardware components currently in use by the HP1000 control system and test the new software in simulation mode. The PC-STEER system includes all the code necessary for simulating the telescope and will be used to test the PC-STEER device server, new observing programs, the scheduler, etc. New software which is being developed for the NCCS e.g. PC-COREL, pulsar timer and other hardware device servers, must have a software simulation mode built in where possible so that it is possible to test some of their functionality without necessarily having access to the actual hardware. All such simulation modes must only be operable where the appropriate software has been manually started from an interactive console.