Abstract
A scanning ion microbeam is controlled and the resulting data captured by a software configurable instrument consisting of a small cluster of INMOS Transputers and a user interface programme running on a UNIX workstation. Communication between Transputers and the workstation is via Ethernet using a number of standard protocols. The "openness" of the design philosophy is such that much of the work may be applied to other applications / computer systems. One of the aims of the project is to transfer much of the conventional hardware associated with ion beam analysis to software on the Transputer.