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Minutes of CSPC No 33,
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held at 11:30am
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on 21st May 1991
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Minutes taken by Duncan White
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33.1.1 : Those Present
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MSS,
JIM,
DJH,
CLH,
SE,
RCP,
FHL,
DCW
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33.1.2 : Apologies were received from
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Jill Payne and Duncan Gillies.
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33.1.3 : Corrections to the previous Minutes
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No corrections were made.
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33.2 : Matters Arising
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Sue pointed out that ISE2 students are, in fact,
using the 5 TCSUNS in addition to the VLSI suns (Vlsi and Vlsi 02).
Vlsi 03 was not used.
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Francois added that he has not, so far,
managed to establish who has responsibility for
the maintenance of vlsi03.
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33.3 : Report on Computer Board Equipment
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Morris and Jim described the latest meeting as follows:
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DEC, HP, Sun and Silicon Graphics have tendered:
DEC's tender is the cheapest by about 30%,
and will apply whether or not the whole College places a single order.
This is looking increasingly unlikely,
as the Chemistry Department are very likely to go for Silicon Graphics,
who have a strong reputation in molecular modelling.
Morris stated that, whatever the College decides,
the Department can accept any of the four tenders,
and the College will fund it.
He added, in response to a question from Sue,
that this has been agreed by the College.
The DEC price is about #4500 for a colour DECstation 5000
with 16M RAM, and a MIPS R3000 processor.
DEC's maintenance contracts are also slightly cheaper.
The desirability of getting a resident Site Engineer was discussed,
with Morris suggesting that this was very likely given the size of the order,
and Francois pointing out that we have requested this before,
without success.
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CSG are trying to get a evaluation machine -
the Computer Centre already have a loan machine,
and we may be able to borrow it from them for a while.
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Moving on to software:
Miranda is available,
and there is a Modula-2 compiler from Gardens Point
(Ian Moor recently evaluated the Sparc version of this compiler).
Morris also mentioned that there were some fairly vague rumours
of an unsupported Modula-2 compiler*.
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* this is in fact the DEC WRL Modula-2+ compiler.
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SmallTalk is also available,
and the usual C and Berkeley Pascal compilers
are both assumed to be available.
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DEC have also stated that they will guarantee to upgrade each workstation
from the MIPS R3000 to the R4000 processor when it is available,
for a fixed price of #1500.
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The Silicon Graphics tender is also fairly cheap - and their workstations
have the same MIPS R3000 processor as the DEC.
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Sun's tender is the most expensive of the lot,
for a 16M Colour workstation -
a modified IPC with a Sparc 2 installed,
known as the IPX -
the price is approximately #7000.
Jim added that Sun appear to be uninterested in selling to
academia at present,
having apparently switched their effort to financial companies.
The other companies are trying rather harder, and are willing to bargain.
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Jim added that he thinks the order, even if placed immediately,
may well not be satisfied in time for the start of the next Academic year.
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Sue pointed out that the existing setup is good,
with the Sparcs already in place,
and operating considerably better than the Gould ever did,
so it is not necessary to get the Computer Board kit in place for
the start of next term.
David agreed.
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We agreed that we spend a week on evaluating the DEC workstation,
and then decide.
Jim is to get an evaluation copy of the Gardens Point Modula-2 compiler,
which costs about #70,
and try to get the unsupported Modula-2 compiler.
If possible, we should also investigate the Edinburgh Portable Modula-2
compiler.
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33.4 : X terminals for Teaching Assistants
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Duncan said that he now has a Sun 3/50 ("missy") configured as an X terminal.
He added that you don't realise how big and dominating they are until
you have one in front of you on your own desk!
Sue added that the TAs have been looking at this,
and several of them might prefer something smaller,
such as the NCD X terminal.
Sue also thought that the NCD-16 X terminal, with an A4 paper white screen,
cost about #1600 when the Functional Programming section bought four
a couple of years ago.
Morris and Jim revealed that College Policy may
be against buying X terminals -
favouring micros running a commercial X Server.
(Both Macs and PCs have X Server products now available.)
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Morris suggested that a feasible alternative might be the Mac LC
(2MB RAM, 16MZ 68020, 40MB hard disk and 12" mono screen)
with an Ethernet interface which should become available in June.
This whole system may cost #1300.
This obviously has the advantage that a single machine could satisfy
someone who primarily uses a Mac,
while occasionally needing to use X windows.
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Duncan added that some TAs might prefer this, and others might
prefer a higher performance X terminal.
This depended on how much individual TAs work on Macs and how much
on Unix.
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It was agreed that the Mac LC should be investigated for
TAs, but so should the NCDs.
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33.5 : Membership of CSPC
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Morris started by detailing the existing arrangement,
and then proposed a modified structure:
David & Sue suggested that two elected lecturers was excessive,
since so many of the
.I "ex officio"
members are themselves lecturers.
This was agreed.
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Duncan expressed concern that the Head of HSG (Bob Pullen)
was no longer an
.I "ex officio"
member,
suggesting that HSG have an important role to play in these meetings.
Jim pointed out that HSG now came under CSG,
and that the elected member of CSG could very well be Bob Pullen if desired.
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Morris will seek the Head of Dept's approval for this new constitution.
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Morris also mentioned that,
in September, Chris will be stepping down as CSG Head,
and Morris will take over this role.
This, of course, means that CSPC will need a new Chairman from that time.
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Other Equipment
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10 monochrome Mac LC's (2MB RAM, 16MZ 68020, 40MB hard disk) are here,
having been bought for PhD students.
However, Jim said not many of the PhD students have,
in fact, actually requested these machines,
and asked how he should distribute them in the face of such apathy?
It was decided that 5 should be allocated immediately to any PhD
students Jim could find,
and the remaining 5 held back temporarily until someone asks for them!
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33.6 : Any Other Business
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Jim warned us that he has been informed that the
Federation against Software Theft (FAST) may pay IC a visit soon,
checking up that all software is properly licensed:
primarily on Macintoshes and IBM PCs.
Sue mentioned that we all distribute exam marks on Microsoft Excel,
and so may have "passed around" copies of the Excel spreadsheet.
Jim pointed out that we have 20 licensed copies of Microsoft Word and Excel,
so we are probably covered on these.
In addition, all those who run software from the Mac Servers are using
the licensed copies from there.
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There was some discussion about whether FAST would be counting copies
installed on hard disks, or copies in use at the time.
It was agreed that Jim would write a memo to all staff,
warning of the impending visit, and asking everyone to check what
software they have installed on their hard disks.
Basically, of course, this comprises a full software audit.
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Peter Burger has made an informal request to Morris that he needs to have
one of the new 486 PC lab machines,
so that he has the same equipment as the students whose projects he
supervises.
This will be considered later, when Peter makes a formal request.
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33.7 : Date of Next Meeting
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The next meeting will be held at 3pm on Wednesday 29th May.