An Optical Multichannel Analyser (OMA) has been developed for the detection of radiation from laser-produced plasmas (LPPs). The system is based on a gated image - intensified photodiode array (PDA) Software for the control of, and data acquisition from, the OMA system has been developed. A high resolution (10ns) delay generator was also designed and constructed to permit timeresolved. optical spectroscopy. The system has been tested and operated with a laser plasma source m the visible and near infra-red (NIR) spectral region (400 -> 800nm) Some initial results from preliminary experiments to extend the usefulness of the OMA system into the vacuum-UV (VUV) are presented.