towson@brl.arpa (SECAD) (01/15/87)
Fellow CP/Mers - It took a long time for the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity (AMSAA) to start using computers en masse, but it has definitely happened now. The word has gotten around that text preparation and written communication via computer are really slick, and the whole mob seems to have gotten accounts. As a result, the poor old AMSAA VAX has been loaded down to a crawl lately. For those of you who dig UNIX load factors, I saw it hit 24 for a while today! To cut themselves some slack, AMSAA have just installed the "super- screamer" of the Gould 9000 series. It has two processors, a hardware multiply accelerator and 16 megs of main memory, and it is called AMSAA-SEER That's "see-er", as in "forteller of the future", a bit of a jab at the business AMSAA is in - systems analysis. At the present time, human inertia is keeping most people on the VAX, even though you sometimes have to wait quite a while for keystrike echos and anything else you would like to happen fast. So I have decided to remove a small bit of the load from the poor old VAX, and at the same time speed-up the handling of this list. I have moved the list to SEER. Now for the (maybe) bad news: We are running some new mail software here. In keeping with the current thinking and policy regarding network address handling, the new mail system is heavily dependent on a "name server" (another computer that knows all about host addresses). When the name server or the software that interacts with it screws-up, you would be amazed (if you haven't seen it) how completely disgusting things can get. To make things a bit worse, the folks who have to fix these problems (with maybe one or two exceptions) are just learning about all this good stuff, so we are all scratching our heads together. Anyhow, it seems to be working now, so I have taken the plunge and moved the list. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding FROM NOW ON, PLEASE ADDRESS ALL INFO-CPM MAIL TO: info-cpm@amsaa-seer.arpa And send mail dealing with list maintenance (additions, deletions, etc.) to: info-cpm-request@amsaa-seer.arpa ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Mail sent to the old "amsaa.arpa" address will still go where it should, but it will take longer because it will have to bounce off the VAX. Please report any problems that seem to be related to this change to BOTH of the following addresses: Dave Towson <towson@amsaa.arpa> and info-cpm-request@amsaa-seer.arpa (By the way, I'm sending this message from BRL-AOS as yet another check on the performance of the mail system.) Dave Towson info-cpm list maintainer