The ECN No Name Newsletter is no longer being published. This is an archived issue.

AA Has Been Retired

The AA VAX in the Agricultural Engineering department has been retired after almost six years of computing service. AA was installed as an ECN machine on May 13, 1983, replacing a seven year old, over-worked PDP 11/70. AA was disconnected from the network on March 28, 1989. During its life, it has provided much of the computing needs of the AGEN faculty, staff and graduate students.

Along with being the main departmental computer for program development and word processing, AA ran some unique hardware and software. Three of the unique devices were a 16-channel data acquisition system, a Megatek 7290 dynamic graphics system and a high resolution phototypesetter.

AA has been replaced by Stable, a Sun 4/280 fileserver. Stable is truly a VAX replacement. Not only does Stable provide file service to thirteen Sun clients, it also has 96 serial ports used to support the terminals and printers that were once on AA.

The main reason for AA's retirement is to reduce the cost of operating the department's computer systems. AA's retirement is a part of a continuous motion of upgrading the departments computer resources.

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