We've just loaded a new set of software to the $SSW/hessi/idl/atest
directory with a lot of changes to many of the basic routines including the
following:

1.  Better handling of data dropouts.
2.  Better handling of dead time
3.  Narrow bins in spectrogram are now handled correctly (no more double
counting).
4.  Subtle change in packet reader so that now all packets are read
correctly (before, a missing aspect packet caused problems).
5.  In export to SPEX, made the flux consistent with the drm and area
variables. We believe the hessi fluxes reported in SPEX had been too low by
a factor of nine. This error was introduced just after the SPD meeting in
June.
6. Fixed the export of the error arrays from hsi_spectrum.  In some
circumstances the squareroot was taken twice.
7.  Moved livetime and dropout processing from spectrogram to eventlist
object to facilitate a future intermediate eventlist file that will speed up
processing.
8.  Added error handling mechanism to all of the objects.

The goal of the new error handling mechanism is to prevent scripts  from
crashing when the data can't be processed for some reason.  Instead of
halting deep down in the routines, the getdata call should return a -1.
This means that you need to check the result of the getdata call before
using it (hopefully you're already doing that).

As always, if you find problems with the new software, you can remove the
atest directory from your path by doing the following:
1. Start a fresh session of IDL
2. In IDL, type:
     remove_path,'atest'
3. Continue to run normally.
4.  Please tell us about the problems (hessibugs@hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov)!