Investigation reveals that all (3) running turbos on site (YBM, XBM and X-end) shut down simultaneously at 1603 hrs. local time yesterday -> Coincidentally, this was only a few minutes prior to my opening of GV2 -> As such, my earlier theory of the XBM turbo tripping off on its safety valve pressure setpoint turned out not to be the case -> This is confirmed also by the fact that PT170A never came on scale.

Today at ~1230 hrs. local -> I spun-up to 100% rpm the troublesome XBM turbo by employing the technique of "loading" the rotor.  To do this, I maintained the turbo inlet pressure at ~ 0.2 torr by adjusting the "up-to-air" needle valve at the turbo's inlet while it spun-up -> Once at full speed, I shut off the air and eventually valved-in the turbo to the XBM volume.  


ERRORS in PRESSURE GAUGES
Also, the LHO vacuum equipment is beginning to show its age as we have been experiencing an increase in the failure rate of the site cold-cathode gauges (lifetime maturation) -> most noticeably PT180B, PT120B and PT170B are reading bogus values now for portions of their nominal range.  As of this writing, both the YBM and XBM turbo inlet CC gauges are reading 1.8 x 10-6 torr which is what I would expect for the recent history -> I would then guess the pressure at BSC2 to be 5-7 x 10-6 torr