What's New in the Undergraduate Computing Laboratory

2004-2005

Summer 2004

Approximately $5K of SCAP funds (I don't think anybody informed me of the exact numbers this time) were provided for server upgrades via Nancy Duffrin (thanks!). These were used to purchase and install the items below.

2001-2004

After the installation of the new workstation hardware in September 2001, only software and minor hardware repairs were performed on the lab through May 2004.

2000-2001

As of September, 2001, all workstations in Room 2128 have been replaced with updated hardware. The new systems, which were purchased as parts and assembled in-house, have the following features:

This upgrade is the culmination of a months-long project that began in February 2001 with the allocation of funds (an estimated $60K was spent on the upgrade) administered through Nancy Duffrin's office (thanks!), continued through Spring 2001 with research on the type of hardware that would be suitable for the upgrade and purchase of a prototype, final selection and purchase of upgrade parts in May/June, 2001, and the removal of the old systems and assembly and installation of the new systems in July/August, 2001.

The new systems are currently running FreeBSD, as the old systems did. It is planned for the new systems to also run Windows 2000 Professional (the old systems ran Windows NT). The Windows 2000 capability is currently awaiting available CS staff time to create a suitable installation image that can be loaded on the individual disk drives on the workstations. We hope to have this available before too much time goes by.

Thanks to the following individuals for the significant amounts of time they spent on this project:

1999-2000

1998-1999

Some new hardware purchases were made with SCAP funds and the hardware was installed by Professor Stark (me). I was delinquent (too busy, actually) to write this up, so I'm going to have to go back to my E-mail archives to find out what was done. I do recall the following:

1997-1998

Once again we thank the committee in charge of allocating SCAP funds for allocating about $20K this year for maintenance and upgrade items. These funds were used during Spring 1998 to purchase the items below. Installation was performed by Professor Stark during Summer 1998.

Other miscellaneous items were purchased using funds from student fees. These included:

Professor Stark spent approximately 35 minutes per system in Summer 1998 to perform motherboard/memory/video replacement on 30 workstations. He spent approximately 20 minutes per system to replace 10 monitors. Significant other amounts of time were spent setting up the RAID server and performing software updates. Parts replacement performed by Professor Stark included:

1996-1997

Improvements in the Lab continued. Thanks to Rich Reeder, Nancy Duffrin, Phil Lewis, and anyone else I don't know about who was on the committee in charge of allocating SCAP funds, the UG Lab was allocated $15K for equipment purchases. These funds were used during Spring 1997 to purchase the items below. Installation was performed by Professor Stark during the Spring 1997 semester.

In May, 1997, Professor Stark replaced 6 failed power supply fans.

1995-1996

Several improvements were made to the Lab equipment in 1995-1996. These improvements were funded primarily by fees paid by students during the 1995-1996 academic year, and the improvements were implemented primarily by Professor Stark.

1995: Original Configuration

When the Lab was opened in 1995, the main items in the Lab configuration were as follows:
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