response 25 of 94:

Mar 19 23:53 UTC 1996

It's fine with me to meet at Jan's place, too, especially if he wants an
excuse to clean up.  :)

I've added the meeting time to the motd.

response 27 of 94:

Mar 20 15:11 UTC 1996

Ok, then let's meet at your place.
Cool beans!

response 29 of 94:

Mar 22 18:17 UTC 1996

I promised more complete directions, but I think they are really kind of
unnecessary, since it's not all that hard to find.  However, for the sake
of overkill, here's the same info with extra redundancy:

Instructions:
   - Get on Plymouth Rd (it's an exit off US-23 for out of towners).
     I'm not very far from the Broadway Bridge end of the street.
   - Drive until you reach the light at the Barton Dr, which is the only
     light on a long stretch otherwise without lights.
   - Turn onto Barton Dr.
   - First Right into Traver Knoll Apartments
   - Keep left at Y intersection.
   - 1031 Barton is at far end of the second building on right.
   - Park in any empty space.
   - Buzz #210 to get in (my name is on the mailbox, but not the buzzer).
         
Totally unnecessary map:

 --------------     ------------    
                     Traver st.      Far end of second building is
 ---------------   --------------    1031 Barton.  Jan's apt is #210
               | B |                 on second floor.  X marks spot.
               | a |          ____________________________________
               | r |         /  _________________________    ______
               | t |         | | +--------+   +--------+ \  / +---
               | o |         | | |        |   |      X | | |  |   
               | n |         | | +--------+   +--------+ | |  +---
               |   |________/  /                         | |___
               | D  ________  (  Traver Knoll Apartments \_______
               | r |        \  \___
 Ann Arbor     |   |         \_____ wrong way!  Stay left at Y!
 Railroad      |   |                    
 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
               |   |
 ---------------   -------------------------------------------------
                light         Plymouth Rd
 ---   -------------------------------------------------------------
<-- to Broadway Bridge & Downtown      To North Campus & US-23 --->

response 31 of 94:

Mar 23 02:00 UTC 1996

        {nice map anyway...sorry I won't be there.}

response 33 of 94:

Mar 23 19:35 UTC 1996

I think Valerie will post full minutes.  But highlights:

 - We were all surprised to find ourselves in good enough shape budgetarily
   to be able to undertake some modest growth.  It looks like we can afford
   to (a) add two more phone lines, (b) get a UPS to put all our equipment
   on, and (c) set up a News machine.

 - We felt that we did not have enough money to upgrade our network connection
   to an ISDN link (even if we didn't do the above stuff), but since this is
   something that would really be good to do, we'd like to do a fund-raiser
   focused on this issue.  First off we're going to have to figure out
   exactly how much it would cost us and how we'd set up the connection.

 - We thought doing an auction as a general fundraiser real-soon-now would
   be good.

 - There are a variety of near zero-cost projects that we'd like to pursue
   now as staff time is no longer soaked up by the sun 4.  These include
   upgrading the modems (which we already raised money for), Setting up a
   mail forwarder, setting up a kerberous server, bringing Backtalk on line,
   switch over to the terminal server, and half-a-dozen other things that
   slip my mind.

response 35 of 94:

Mar 23 19:38 UTC 1996

Oops.  Monday's *board* meeting.

response 37 of 94:

Mar 23 22:25 UTC 1996

A mail forwarder is just another machine on our subnet that will be able to
accept incoming mail for Grex when Grex can't. When grex is down or
overloaded, it does not accept mail. The forwarder will hold our mail instead
of the sender's machine. This has a number of advantages for us.
Once Grex is able to accept mail again, it can be transferred to Grex very
quickly.  Because of the nature of SMTP mail, this mail-forwarder is a
relatively simple project.

Backtalk is the new name for a brand new web-based conferencing package.
Backtalk was developed by Jan Wolter and I on our own time.
It is compatible (or will be) with Picospan, and capable of using the
existing picospan conferences. It will give a completely different look to
conferencing for those who use it, but have no effect on those who use
picospan, except that there will be more people to talk to.

Backtalk will be made available for Grex to use for free, but it is
not freeware. Backtalk is not quite "beta" yet. We are "alpha" testing it.

response 39 of 94:

Mar 24 01:37 UTC 1996

One part of the meeting would have taken a different turn if you had been
there, STeve. However, we can continue the discussion on-line. I proposed that
we should not use the VME chassis that used to be Grex as a news server. 
I sincerely believe that it will cost us too much in electricity over the next
three years. 

I agree with you that we do not want to proliferate platforms, though.
We currently have 2 (if you don't count the Road-runner, "greedy").
We have the Sun 4/260 which is Grex, and we have the intel platform running
Free-BSD. (gryps).

I proposed that we abondon the idea of using VME architecture for the news
server and instead inmplement that server on  intel hardware. It can be done
for the same or lower up-front $$, and once it is running we figure that we'll
save $25/month in electricity to operate it (at least) which adds up
to $300/year.

No one was there to contradict me, and i do not know what you 
(or greg or marcus or remmers) would have said had any of you been there, 
but I am sincerely interested in knowing whether I made any error in my 
analysis.  I believe we whould permanently shut down the extra VME box.

response 41 of 94:

Mar 24 06:25 UTC 1996

Another cost for using the Sun 4 instead of Intel is the cost of dealing with
all the heat the Sun 4 generates -- a definite concern in the summer months.

Jan's summary is very accurate.  I'll post more details when I'm awaker.

response 43 of 94:

Mar 24 06:40 UTC 1996

  Steve, I think you underpriced SIMMs for the PC, and overpriced
other components a bit.  Currently I think you'd pay $12-$13 per
meg for used SIMMs (generally falling fast though).  Other prices
are for new equipment.  I'm not sure what ethernet cards would be
supported, so that may cost more.
 
  486-40              $70
  32M RAM            $400
  adaptec scsi        $90
  mono monitor/card  free (have 'em)
  ethernet            $25
  -----------------------
  total              $585
 
  Also, for the 4/200 card, unless you're planning on buying a
spare for backup, they're $100, not $200.
 
  Another cost for the Sun 4 besides power and heat removal is
if you want to keep it on a UPS.  An extra 500VA (approx) of power
protection needed might add another $250 (very roughly) to the UPS.
(Those figures are pulled out of a hat; some further analysis would
be helpful).

response 45 of 94:

Mar 24 21:38 UTC 1996

  Possible point to ponder: for $300 more, the Intel box could be a
586-133 with PCI bus and PCI SCSI card (assuming FreeBSD has drivers
for one of them).

  By the way, are y'all pretty sure 32MB of RAM is enough for the kind
of news server you want to run?  I saw a web page a while back that told
you how to calculate how much you'd generally want for a given number
of articles per day.  I can probably locate it if there's interest.

response 47 of 94:

Mar 24 22:31 UTC 1996

   Forget selling any of our Sun's: no one is apt to want them.  Or
if we do find someone, it will have to be local, since shippeing
hundreds of miles would cost as much as the unit itself.
   No, I'm not sure that INN will be completly happy in 32M of ram,
but its a start.  Since its been envisioned that the news machine
would do little else other than news however, we might be able to
get away with it.
   I don't think we need a 133Mhz system for this--we need reasonably
fast I/O, not CPU.  Unforunateley, AT's provide fast CPU cheaply: its
their best advantage over other things.  I/O bandwidth isn't that
great.
  Jan, I agree with you that in the longer term, an AT box of
some sort is going to be the way to go.  I do however question
jumping to one now, given the hardware we currently have.  We're
going to need to raise funds somehow for the news machine--we
need all the disk we can get our hands on.
  People are also neglecting to understand that the VME chassis is
simply more rugged.  At least 4 times last year during power
problems I saw gryps, the 386 based router lose its mind when the
Sun-3 merily went along.  Thats part of the underlying reason
I still favor Sun stuff: it was designed for commercial applications,
and shows it in terms of the way its built.  That is something to
remember.

response 49 of 94:

Mar 24 23:20 UTC 1996

Either way, we're going to spend $$ on disk.  Probably at the same prices,
since we'll want/need SCSI on either a Sun or an Intel box.  I figure that
the Intel is a no-brainer, since we likely won't need to do anything about
heat this summer (Gryps did OK, as a reminder), while if we run a VME box we
will certainly have to do something extra to remove heat.