paul@umich.UUCP (12/18/84)
The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has a campus wide computer center that runs MTS (michigan Terminal System) on an Amdahl 5860. It supports several hundred interactive users. In addition, they support a variety of micros, such as Zenith, PCs, Macs, etc. They are also proposing to NSF to be a supercomputer site. There will be another Amdahl (a V8?) installed sometime next year, and will probably run MTS as well. There are three Vax 780s and a vax 750 located in the EECS dept. One, (this machine) is a vax 780 running bsd 4.2, and is the 'department machine.' The others are used by research projects and users who are in the department but are supported by 'outside' research dollars, at least for the most part. They are running 4.1, but will be converted over the holidays. We will most likely be receiving a DG MV10000 soon as well. There are many Apollos, Macs, and PCs provided by something called CAEN. That is the computer service organization for the Engineering College. (Computer Assisted Engineering Network). I think CAEN is trying to do a good job, but is still an emerging organization with the problems (of a startupnature) that accompany one. That, I hope, will work out well. The business school has a raft of micros as well. They have a deal going with Burroughs. I am employed by the EECS dept. to manage/run the Vaxes. I am not a student here. STRICTLY PERSONAL OPINION AND ASSESSMENT FOLLOWS: Let me exercise my 1st amendment rights here. My feeling is that Unix is a weak sister at Michigan, in terms of support and dollars available for new hardware. I also think that computing at Umich is turning into a big office automation project, as opposed to developing more of a computer science research environment. Micros are being supported as solutions to a lot of problems, but I feel they are suboptiomal solutions in most cases. There are counter-examples to this (like this site), but I believe this to be true over the U as a whole. Management here doesn't have a good technical grasp of Unix, or the machines that bsd tends to run on, like Suns and Vaxes. They have a real good grasp on their homebrew system, and they are propelled further in that direction by a certain amount of large scale organizational inertia. I have been disappointed by Apollos, both because of local site administration difficulties and hardware problems. Simply put, a lot of Apollos crash a lot. My personal biases are (1) I am a 4.2 unix bigot, (2) I don't like Mac-size machines, and (3) I am tired of being in an environment where Unix doesn't flourish as much I would like it to. So, I am pretty cranky sometimes. On the bright side, there is a research organization in Ann Arbor called ITI (Industrial Technology Institute) that is a 99% unix site. They have two 750s, 5 suns, and are awaiting delivery on a 785 with a good chance of more Suns and possibly another Vax on the way as well. They have a certain amount of affiliation with the University, but are their own organization. Paul Killey MacUniversity of Michigan