Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 24 November, 1980 The meeting was called to order at 19:33 by William M. York. In attendance were Jay, Barmar, The Hon. Mr. Gary Palter (Sir), JPT, JIS, c|, RLL, WMY, RDM, CAH, DCP, Steve, J9, ACW. The minutes of the meeting of 17 November, 1980, were read and accepted as corrected. User Interrupt: David W. Sarup wants to use Macsyma on Multics: MC address space is not sufficient. See previous week's minutes: this was deferred to meeting. This is a UROP project which will turn into a thesis. He needs net access: he will be doing most of his work on MC and only doing the big stuff on Multics. He has a "Lack of UROP funds" letter from his advisor, Prof. Shimon Levit. Given $100. Treasurer's Report: People are reminded to check the monthly phone bills, posted on the blackboard, and to mark their initials next to long-distance calls that they are responsible for. Month's spending to date is $10126.98. Today (24 November) is the end of the fiscal month. Student spending is $8000, of which $3000 is disk storage. Total disk charges are about $4000. Chairman's Report: The CCE meeting was held last Thursday at 9:00 a.m. The chairman has created a file in the office filing cabinet (Administrative drawer) in which he will keep his impressions of what happens at these meetings. Corbato' summarized what happened at the networking meeting (see last week's minutes). Moses suggested that perhaps MIT could be a test site for DEC/Intel/Xerox's new ethernet network system now being developed. Corbato' says that he has been approached recently about this. JIS tells us that one problem is that the companies want to keep the network proprietary. The school of science was asked if they would buy a computer for academic purposes: they responded that they were reluctant to make that kind of expenditure until they were assured that such a thing would be useful. Prof. Hulsizer thought it was crazy that he could not assign homework involving computation without going to infinite hair to get accounts for everybody. Course VI is planning a big auditorium between buildings 36 and 38, with amazing video equipment. The proposed VLSI project currently has a tentative budget of $16M, with $1.5M earmarked for moving the Center. People in the CCE agreed that consulting should remain on campus, and that there should be terminal rooms on campus. People all across campus are losing with text processing, buying all kinds of random individual devices, because there is no master plan. Corbato' talked about "the tenuous flavor" of the SIPB's budget. Wes got very defensive. The research grant overhead tariff is going to be extended to computer usage. However, computer hardware purchases will not be figured into the overhead charge. This is insane. While at the CCE meeting, Moses passed a note to the Chairman asking whether we want the Delphi 11/45 for free. JIS reports that Moses had brought this up a week ago to him. Will this be construed as a replacement for our current services? An 11/45 does not have near the capability to handle our users. We hope that this 11 will not be subtracted in future reckonings of the SIPB's needs. Moses seems to agree to this in principle. Who would take the service contract on this? A lot of things need replacement. The memory is from Cambridge Memories, and may not work. The TTY controller needs to be replaced. The disk controller is shot. It would have to be replaced. The 11 is noisy. It needs a slightly prepared machine room. How much would this 11 really cost us compared with just getting a new 11/23? It isn't clear. It's hard to estimate how much the Delphi machine would cost to maintain. The disk controller and the interface would probably run about $3000 apiece to replace. Most of the machine's memory is from CM. The whole memory should probably be scrapped. Also, if the machine is not under service contract now, it will be hard to get it under a contract again. The chairman will go talk to Joel Moses about it. He will try to find out what strings are attached. Will we have to give priority to course 6 students? Will we have to run UNIX? All these things need research. The chairman got a haircut. Office Report: Where is the office space heater? Should we use it? It was borrowed by somebody in the Publications Office. The consensus seems to be that we should get it back. We will try to have the trash emptied sometime over the weekend. The Plasma TV system has changed considerably, with amazing new features. Talk to DCP for details. Computer Services: BIM has discovered that certain positions on the Spinwriter printwheels cannot be addressed. We believe that this is because one of the CPU boards is an obsolete version. We will get this fixed. New rates start tomorrow. The Multics IOM frotzed over the weekend and brought the system to its knees for three days. The office Multics lines are dead. The user meeting tomorrow has not been planned adequately. Someone has to get on the stick and plan this meeting. c| volunteered if some one or two people help her. ACW and WMY will help, at 3:00 tomorrow. Telecommunications Report: The ADM 3A was reported losing yesterday. CAH checked it out and discovered that the problem was a line, C.H126. He called this fact in to the office where it was forgotten. The terminal manuals were missing from the cabinet in the Student Center. Also missing is the small screwdriver used for EIA connector screws. Someone should be Student Center Terminal Room Manager. Steve LeBlanc volunteered. Brave lad. The ADM 3A has a losing mode where spaces do not erase. Barmar determined that the problem with the VT100s in the Student Center is actually due to the Vadic. Also, the serviceman says that the New House LA36 is OK, and that the problem is probably with the modem. The Vadics have never been ordered. Money may be tight. We have yet to sell off our remaining Kulp Keyboards. Publications Report: We are near a form B fault. We need more SIPB cards. We will try to get yellow. DCP produced masters. IAP Report: IAP is coming. IAP Lisp course administrator will be selected. Alan came in at this point. Other: The quizzes were not graded this week. The ASA wants to hold a Spring Midway, like the R/O activities midway except in Spring. We will participate. NEC has released a bunch of new Spinwriter fonts. Applications: Steven P. Larky was Warned for sending obscenities to the Consultant's mailbox. BIM spoke to him. He said he wouldn't do it again, and was turned back on. Naha and GCO walked in at this point with the Polaroid Building. Bradley Kuszmaul was Warned for using Multics for his own business, for which he gets paid. He was caught when he queued an invoice for the work he has been doing on Multics, and other computers at MIT like EECS and AI. His application was vague and did not mention that he would be paid for this work. He was given "come to office", and has not shown up. JIS was told about his use of the other systems. Total appropriations: $2205 without Coop Autoed: $2005 Student: $1805 370: $200 EC Vote: $100 To Meeting: $100, all Student. Coop: None. Other Other: Plummer has reduced Plummer's Cross to 30 qtw. The March Scientific American Mathematical Games column will be about the Cube, by Hofstadter. The cover will have a picture of BSG's cube drawing on it. Electronics Magazine had a Lisp article that was reasonable, with only a couple of gaffes. We should pay Time/Life for our Discover subscription. Steak Fry is a week from Thanksgiving. Symbolics now has office space on Vassar St. across from Briggs Field. The meeting was adjourned at 22:20 into German Chocolate cake by RLL. Minutes taken and submitted by Allan C. Wechsler ;; Local Modes: ;; Mode:TEXT ;; LISP ) Hack:1 ;; Auto Fill Mode: ;; Fill Column:70 ;; Fill Prefix: ;; END: