The new readout electronics for the BaF/sub 2/-calorimeter TAPS

A highly compact and fast VME based readout board for BaF/sub 2/ scintillation detectors has been designed, developed, and finally tested in an in-beam experiment. Adapted to the excellent properties of BaF/sub 2/, the unit allows to digitize time, energy, and pulse-shape information of four detector channels in parallel. The board is piggy-back plugged onto a motherboard containing a high-speed 12-bit ADC and the VME interface, commercially available in the customized version CAEN V874 A. Both combine to one single VME slot. A first measurement of the photon response of a TAPS subarray with energy tagged photons up to 2.6 GeV documents the full functionality and excellent performance.