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Computer Happenings At ABE
NO NAME NEWSLETTER -- September 1996
Stan Harlow
Several computer changes have taken place over the summer
in the Agricultural and Biological Engineering department.
Here are a few bits of information about what has been successful
in our department.
-
The entire ABE building ethernet wiring and networking equipment
has been replaced with the new Purdue Data Network (PDN) wiring.
Each ethernet computer is now connected via twisted pair cable
to a data jack in one of 86 office PICs (Purdue Information Connections).
The PDN wiring provides a common campus-wide 10BaseT connection.
The transfer from ECN/ABE supported ethernet wiring and equipment
to PDN went fairly smoothly. Most people were unaware of the change.
-
All 66 Sun computers in ABE have been upgraded to run
Solaris 2.5, Sun's latest operating system.
-
Drs. Jones and Engel in ABE have been successful in receiving a Sun
Academic Equipment Grant to the Department. Sun has donated a 2-200
MHZ Ultra 2 compute server for use in a Java-based community
information project. In addition, we anticipate that all users in
ABE will be able to access one of Sun's
fastest computers for both interactive and long-running research
processes.
-
We have been pleased with the performance of a new HP 5SiMX
laser printer installed this past spring. This 24 page per
minute printer has printed over 156,000 sheets without problems. ABE
has strived to make low-cost quality printing readily available to
all ABE staff and students, including color printing. A new Apple
Color LaserWriter 12/600 PS printer has been installed to provide
fast and inexpensive plain paper color prints and transparencies.
The cost of color printing continues to drop.
-
ABE uses a program called Samba running on its Sun fileserver
to share UNIX files to MicroSoft PCs running Windows 3.11 and Windows
95. Under Windows 95, Samba allows long UNIX filenames to appear
without mapping the filenames to the 8.3 DOS filename. Samba also
handles UNIX group permissions and UNIX printers properly so office
staff can share their UNIX resources more easily on PC's.
-
Computer SIMM memory prices have dropped dramatically.
For example, the price for a 4MB Sparc 2 SIMM dropped from $150.00
one year ago to $30.00 now. It is a good time to feed a memory-starved
computer with additional SIMM memory to greatly improve its performance.
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