Open Computing Facility

Minutes of the April 25, 1995 General Meeting

Agenda


Attendance

Active Members Present:
Others Present:
None.

The meeting was called to order at 7:13 pm in Sibley Auditorium by Jennifer.

Announcements

Jennifer announced that next week would be the final Board of Directors meeting of the semester. Since the Summer Board will be elected at this time, she said she'd appreciate it if everyone showed up. Also on the agenda is discussing the approximately $2000 the OCF has yet to spend from this years' budget.

General Manager Report

Jennifer reported that the OCF has been informed they are remodeling the third floor of Eshelman (where the OCF office is located) over the summer and the ASUC wants suggestions for what they should do while remodeling. Anyone who has comments should tell her so she can pass them on.

Jennifer also reported that she has been working with a HP customer service representative to get one of his clients to donate a pair of Apollo DN 5500's with 760 meg hard drives and 32 megs RAM each. Kenji mentioned he has been talking to a Sun reseller who is looking to trade a SparcStation for parts for his Apollo workstation.

Jennifer said the Sun SparcServer 4/470 promised us by NEC is still at NEC waiting for it's replacement to arrive. Ken Emery, the NEC employee who arranged the donation, is leaving NEC soon, but has left word that the machine is promised to us when it is finally taken out of service. The OCF has borrowed a 32-megabyte RAM board from the CSUA that is designed for the 4/400 series, but which ERic Mehlhaff thinks might work in our current 4/330 as well. Once the OCF finds out whether or not it is useful to us, we will talk to the CSUA about making arrangements for us to keep it, since it is currently not useful to them.

Jennifer also said the OCF's year-end report is due to ASUC soon and anyone who would like to submit something to it can talk to her about it.

Site Manager Report

David Shih reported that sandstorm's hard disk died over the weekend and the prognosis for it does not look good.

Sparc Manager Report

Kenji reported that he and Andrew worked on getting patches for the machines last week. He said that the primary needs for the machines right now are RAM and hard disks.

Other Business & General Discussion

Jennifer asked the assemblage what they thought the OCF's goals should be. Dave Lee said the OCF should take over the world. Jennifer replied that she was looking for shorter-term goals.

Tom Cheng said he'd like the OCF to spend more time on user education. Dave Lee suggested new user orientations. Others suggested working with the dorms and CalSO to deal with new students in a more organized fashion in the fall. Shac said he would talk to CalSO since he is already coordinating activities with them for the Cal Band.

Saar brought up the way new OCF accounts are created. He said he'd like to see a system more like the way Cory accounts are created, where users telnet in to set up an account name and password, then come down in person the next day to pick up a form to activate the account. Discussion ensued on whether or not this plan was better than the current system. It was pointed out that while this could save staff time, it didn't have much benefit for the users, especially if they came down to set up an account only to find out they had to come back again the next day.

The meeting was closed at 8:35 pm. The next Board of Directors meeting will be Tuesday, May 2, 1995 in 120a Bechtel at 7 pm.


Respectfully submitted,

Alan Coopersmith, OCF Secretary