jreuter@cincy.UUCP (Jim Reuter) (05/09/84)
Class scheduling at the University of Cincinnati is also done completely by computer, though people get closed out of classes somewhat frequently because the idiots who prepare class sizes and such don't always seems to understand continuation courses and college required courses. In comparison to the article from osu-dbs!paul, our "campus computer" is also an Amdahl 470 which becomes completely overloaded at the end of every quarter (two hour turnaround for the fast job classes). It is also used for the university DP needs, which is more than a full load. Until recently, that's all there was. They recently bought two VAX 750's for interactive use by students. They removed the majority of the card punching and sorting equipment less than two years ago. The engineering college also bought a 750. (Too bad they all run VMS). The only Unix machines are the two in Electrical Eng. (this is one), one in Mechanical Eng., (all of these are PDP-11's), and a Pixel 68000 in Classics, all bought from grant funding with no university support. Now the Comp. Center wants to buy another big IBM batch beast to meet their 'future needs'. The Comp. Center staff is rather incompetent, usually not capable of getting a job with the local businesses whose DP centers have similar setups (in the rare event that they actually get fired). I would like to know if other colleges have similarly backward computing centers which are living in the dark ages of computing. Are things really this bad at other schools? Jim Reuter Univ. of Cincinnati ECE (decvax!cincy!jreuter)
paul@osu-dbs.UUCP (Paul Placeway) (05/11/84)
Gees, I feel sorry for all you people who are wasting time hand-scheduling. Here at Ohio State (I think that were the second-largest single campus in the states), we fill out a schedule request about the 6th week in the quarter, and get our approved schedule with our fee cards about the 10th week. No fuss, no muss. I am an undergraduate and have been closed out of a course only once at the beginning of my freshman year. Yes, this scheduling is computerized. On the darker side of things, the available hardware for undergrads is really bad. Almost all courses are tought on an Amdhal 470 in batch (cards and (fidjet with) widjet) or almost batch (next to Unix, Wylbur is *nothing*). The only reason I get to play with any reasonable computers is because I got very lucky and got a job as an operator on this research machine (this one). Things are getting better, but when the Computer Center wants to push an IBM 4341 (16M core, ~2 gig disk) rather than supporting the CIS department DEC 2060 (3.5M core, ~500M disk) that is used 4 (yes four) times as much, something is *VERY* wrong. How nice it would be to be a private college with mega-bucks (see and earlier article...) 8-). *** the opinions above are my own and not those of my employer... *** "I even like the chicken if Paul W. Placeway the sauce is not too blue..." The Ohio State University (UUCP: cbosgd!osu-dbs!paul) (CSNet: paul@ohio-state)