In attendance: David Abbott, Fernando Barbosa, Jian-Ping Chen, 
Chris Cuevas, Ed Jastrzembski, Robert Michaels, Kent Paschke, 
Bodo Reitz, Xiaochao Zheng.

- Xiaochao briefly described the physics of this experiment (what are we
building this DAQ for?) and showed the idea of two possible solutions:
FADC- and scaler-based fast counting DAQs.  See
http://hallaweb.jlab.org/experiment/E05-007/daq/minutes/daq_012505_zheng.pdf 
for slides.

- Chris and David commented there exist some tagger/trigger systems in
Hall B and currently being designed for Hall D that are similar to what we
need here.

- For comparison of the two options, Bob mentioned that FADC-based DAQ has
virtually no deadtime while the scaler-based DAQ will have relatively high
deadtime and will be difficult to measure.
 
- Bob emphasized the FPGA part of the FADC-based DAQ should be
re-programmable to experimentalists. David commented this is part of the
"unknowns" of the FADC DAQ. Even if it is possible, there are only a
couple of people on-site who know how to do so using the machine-level
languages.

- Bodo questioned whether there is a 3rd solution: take the analog sum of
PMTs (from one detector) and send it to the FADCs.

- Chris commented that he will have enough manpower to build the
scaler-DAQ.  However, the main disadvantage of scaler-based DAQ is the
loss of information.  Using FADCs one could study signal shape and pileups
etc. using the full sampling at low frequnecies (large pre-scaling).

- Jian-Ping commented that the electronics of Hall A are mostly down in
the Hall, a major difficulty for building/testing the scaler-based DAQ.
THe electronics of Hall C and SLAC are all upstairs in the control room.

- Jian-Ping suggested that it is fairly easy to do test runs with both
systems.  For the scaler-DAQ we can borrow some commercial units from the
electronic group, connect them to the detector outputs, and use a visual
scaler to read out the counts.  For the FADC-DAQ we can do similar tests.
THere may even exist analog sum of the cherenkov, the shower/preshower
that we can directly use.

*** We did not reach the point where a decision can be made at this
meeting. At the next meeting (Feb. 2nd, wednesday 2pm), Fernando will
present what the DAQ/electronic group already have designed for different
halls.  Meanwhile, we (people from Hall A) will make plan for a test run.
The best time for setting up the test run is during the major down time in
Feburary.