Computing Laboratory University of St Andrews

University of St Andrews
Computing Laboratory
Upgrade of the VAX/VMS operating system
Questionnaire on user computing requirements
Database and concordance programs for IBM PCs
INGRES database workshop
North Street classroom and the advisory service
The role of the Computing Laboratory technical sub-group
National Information on Software and Services
Combined Higher Education Software Scheme
Electronic publishing
Serviceability figures
For sale
. . . Ten years ago
Supplement on VAX/VMS version 5.1 and JANET mail
Newsletter
June 1989
32
The upgrade of the VAX/VMS operating system
The VAX/VMS operating system on SAVA,
SAVB, SAVC and SAULCAT was upgraded to
Version 5.1 during the week beginning 12th
June. Details of the most significant changes
are given in a Supplement to this Newsletter.
The upgrade was scheduled for the first
three days of the week, but because of hardware problems on SAVA and SAVB it was
held up and the procedure did not start on
those systems until the Tuesday evening.
The exact nature of the hardware trouble
was difficult to pin down since there were
two separate problems: the console devices
on both systems were faulty, and in addition
there is a non-standard device attached to
SAVA. It eventually turned out that it was
this non-standard device which was bringing the upgrade procedure to a complete
halt.
Mainly as a result of these delays, the
systems were not brought back up until
Thursday and an almost full service was
not resumed until Friday 16th June. We
apologise for the inconvenience this will
have caused to our users.
Questionnaire on user computing requirements
The analysis of the responses to the questionnaire has now been completed and a short
report which summarises the main findings has been written. Those of you who
attended the open user meeting on 1 June
will already have been given a copy of the
report; if you replied to the questionnaire
but did not attend the meeting you should
by now have been sent a copy of the report,
unless of course you replied anonymously!
Additional copies of the report are available
on request from the Computing Laboratory
secretary (extension 8234).
The questionnaire provided much valuable
information which was of great use during
the Computer Board visit on 8 June. The
findings will also be taken into account when
evaluating the tenders from the computer
manufacturers.
A number of issues were raised by users
concerning the services provided by the
Computing Laboratory; action will be taken
on these where appropriate. An article will
be published in the Staff Newsletter discussing some of the more interesting findings
of the questionnaire and the Computing
Laboratory’s views on them.
Once again, thank you to all of you who
took the time to fill in and return what was
a lengthy questionnaire. Hopefully, it will
be a number of years before it is necessary
to carry out a similar exercise.
Access Keycards to the PC classroom and Library
must be returned or renewed IMMEDIATELY
June 1989
3
Database and concordance programs for IBM PCs
The Computing Laboratory has taken advantage of some very good deals with suppliers
of major software. Featured here are Ingres, a relational database program from Relational
Technology, and Micro-OCP, a microcomputer version of the Oxford Concordance Program.
Both are available for your own or departmental PCs for the cost of the disks and the
documentation. Contact Dr Lorna Weatherill, North Street Classroom (ex 447 or 227), for both
packages.
The relational database program for IBM compatible PCs – INGRES
Special copyright conditions
The University of St Andrews holds a ‘site
licence’ from Relational Technology International Ltd for the use of Ingres on any PC in
the University. Use of the software is limited
to educational purposes. The Licence covers non-profit making, academic and institutional activities. You will need to sign a
copyright form before Ingres can be installed
and it is important that the copyright conditions are kept.
General
Ingres is a relational database which will
handle large and small applications. It is appropriate for many research and administrative purposes. It will also be available in the
classrooms for teaching and on the VAX for
larger projects.
Dr Weatherill is dealing with the distribution
of Ingres to PC users throughout the Uni-
versity and if you would like to use it, get in
touch with her. She will be happy to discuss
your requirements and arrange for the package to be installed.
Documentation
Ingres is a complex package but it does have
an ‘easy’ entry level and the Introductory
Manual is reasonably accessible; this can be
bought for £3 a copy. Dr Weatherill also has
a list of books about database applications
and design. A classroom Note to match
those already written for other packages is in
preparation and this will be issued free when
it is complete.
System requirements
You need an IBM PC or compatible, such as a
Zenith. It can be an XT or an AT with 640K of
memory. It must have a hard disk with about
2 megabytes unused.
The Oxford Concordance Program for IBM compatible PCs – Micro-OCP
General
A version of the Oxford Concordance Program which runs on IBM compatible PCs,
Micro-OCP, makes concordances, indexes
and word lists from texts in a variety of
languages and alphabets. It can be used for
many text analysis applications including
the investigation of style, vocabulary distribution, vocabulary distribution, as well as in
language aquisition and teaching. It can be
useful for producing an informal index for
research or teaching.
The advantage of the PC over the VAX version is that it is easy to use; you do not have
June 1989
54
to write the command files. Anyone with
some experience of a word processor should
be able to make sense of it.
Documentation
Micro-OCP is very well documented and
comes with a series of helpful demonstrations. The reference manual is understandable once you have worked through the first
few examples.
System requirements
You need an IBM PC or compatible, such
as a Zenith. It can be an XT or an AT. You
must have at least 520K of memory and a
hard disk. It is compatible with version 2 of
mainframe OCP in that commands and text
can be transfered to a mainframe. Installation of Micro-OCP takes about ten minutes.
Copyright
The University of St Andrews holds a ‘site
licence’ from Oxford Electronic publishing,
Oxford University Press for the use of MicroOCP on any PC in the University. Use of the
software is limited to educational purposes.
No installation can take place without your
signature on the Copyright Declaration. The
Licence covers non-profit making, academic
and institutional activities; this means MicroOCP can be used for research or teaching.
INGRES database workshop
As announced in the May Newsletter, further details and application forms have now
been received for the workshop to be held
at the University of Lancaster during the
week 11th to 15th September.
The further details and application forms are
available from Peter Adamson at the Computing Laboratory (ex 8129, mail to CLSPA).
North Street classroom and the advisory service
Dr Weatherill has been attached to this classroom for a couple of years on a part-time
basis. She was formerly a researcher in history and tends to specialise in support for
IBM compatible PC applications, especially
(but not exclusively) for the arts. She is now
working full-time.
June 1989
She can now be contacted in her office (ex
447), or in the North Street Classroom (ex
227) between 2pm and 3pm every day – she
is often there at other times.
5
The role of the Computing Laboratory technical
sub-group
Three members of the Computing Laboratory staff form a small technical services sub-group
that deal with a number of functional areas including:
•
•
•
•
•
•
installation of public microcomputers and networks
fault-finding on public microcomputers
development of the campus networking infrastructure
cabling of terminals and micros into the network
fault-finding on the campus data network
installation of hardware and software and fault-finding on departmental secretarial microcomputers
• repair of microcomputers
By public we mean computing equipment installed and maintained by the Computing
Laboratory for general use by members of the University in open-access areas.
Inevitably, there is an increasing amount of work to be done, but their basic priorities are,
very roughly:
1
2
3
4
to respond to serious faults on the campus network and fix
to respond to faults in public students classrooms and fix
to respond to faults on secretarial microcomputers (wordprocessors) and fix
to respond to minor faults on the campus network and public terminals and
micros attached to it and fix
5 to commission and install equipment bought by departments/users through the
Computing Laboratory
6 to work on new network developments
7 to fault-find and repair, if possible, other computing equipment
As regards the last of these, occasionally we get requests from departments and users to
investigate and repair faulty microcomputers owned by them and for which they do not
have a maintenance contract. Every request is treated on its merits and whenever possible
assistance is given. Advice will always be proffered; however an in-house repair is only
likely to be possible if it is a piece of equipment (eg a Macintosh computer) with which
the group is familiar. At present, only a charge for the parts used is levied. In recent
years we have been involved in ad hoc, unofficial discussions with other groups within
the University as regards the provision of a hardware repair service, but no general policy
has been agreed in this area.
June 1989
76
National Information on Software and Services
June 1989 Update
Submitted by Rob Armstrong, NISS
The NISS Bulletin Board
We have made some significant changes to the Main Menu recently. The changes were made
to highlight the importance of academic discipline-specific information on NISSBB. The Main
Menu now looks something like this:
A INTRO. for New Users & Contributors
ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES
B The NISS Software Catalogue
N Accountancy to Engineer.
C Academic Computer Services
O Geography to Literature
D Software Information & Services
P Maths. to Physics
 (CHEST, CTISS, PD Archive etc)
R Statistics to Sociology
E Library Services
F Online Information Sources
G Computer-Related Job Vacancies
L Joint Academic NETwork (JANET)
H Computing Groups and Committees
M MAIN MENU
I Subject INDEX
X *Latest CHANGES *
J Special Interest Groups
Y Public Pinboard
K Training Courses, Workshops, etc
Z Table of CONTENTS
                                                                       
<System Messages>                            
Sections N, O, P and R are subdivided (roughly alphabetically) into individual subject areas.
Each subject area is edited/administered by a coordinator (whose interest is in that area) and
is no longer controlled by NISS.
Each subject section is under the direct control of one of the CTI Subject Centres which were
established around the UK on 1 April. (The CTI Subject Centres are listed in section D4B on
NISSBB.) To prepare for this we have been developing tools to allow such specialist groups
to control their own areas of NISSBB; the NISS team is severely overstretched and so we hope
to extend the opportunity for more groups to edit their own specialist areas on NISSBB in the
future.
The Bulletin Board continues to attract considerable interest, consistently recording around
200 accesses per working day. We expect usage to increase still further when the CTI Subject
Centres are fully operational, as almost all of them will be using NISSBB as their principal
online information service.
For security reasons we have had to withdraw the ‘file transfer service’ on NISSBB; this was
originally the only way you could download information from NISSBB to your own system.
As the POST facility now does the same job (much more simply) we hope that the withdrawal of this little-known service will not cause you too much inconvenience.
June 1989
7
The NISS Bulletin Board can be accessed from St Andrews as follows:
if you are using a terminal or micro ...
...connected to
...showing prompt:
then type:
...the Gandalf PACX
enter class
pad and press <RETURN> twice
to connect to ...
... a PAD
PAD>
... a VAX system
$
call niss
pad call niss
The NISS Software and Datasets Catalogue
Work continues on adding records to the Catalogue; our objective is to have 1000 records
catalogued by the end of the year! There are also plans to have the Catalogue registered with
the NRS as UK.AC.NISS.CAT , and to allow login-free access by the end of the year. To find
out more about the Catalogue, mail Colin Work (NISS@SOTON ).
The NISS Software Use Survey
An in-depth survey of ‘software use’ is being carried out at several representative institutions
of Higher Education during 1989. This is in order to gain a picture of software use and purchase within Higher Education, which in turn will help with future planning on a national
scale by the funding bodies and CHEST.
Bath University, Brighton Polytechnic and Dorset Institute of Higher Education have been
surveyed and we shall be visiting several other institutions soon. A preliminary report should
be available by the end of the year.
Combined Higher Education Software Scheme
June 1989 Update
Submitted by Rob Armstrong, NISS
CHEST’s services are in increasing demand
and the three members of the CHEST team
are continually working at full stretch; however despite these obvious signs of ‘success’
the situation is far from satisfactory.
The problem of how to get information
about CHEST and its role across to such a
huge and disparate audience is one which
has not yet been solved. Despite regular
newsletter articles and by direct mailshots
(eg all departmental heads received last
year’s CHEST Directory) many computer
users are still totally unaware of CHEST’s
existence. At one extreme we know that
many computer users remain ignorant of
the special software discounts which CHEST
negotiates for the Higher Education community; at the other extreme the CHEST
June 1989
98
team receives a constant stream of enquiries
from users who should really be talking to
the ‘CHEST Site Contact’ in their own local
Computer Centre.
The ‘CHEST Site Contact’ is the person at
each Higher Education institution who receives all correspondence from CHEST on
software discounts or prospective new deals,
and who is authorised to order the software
packages which have been ‘centrally funded’
for the Higher Education community. A list
of all site contacts is provided under section
D3E of NISSBB; it is they, not CHEST, who
you should speak to if you need any information on CHEST deals.
The CHEST contact in St Andrews is Phil
Robertson in the Computing Laboratory (ex
8112, mail to CLSPR)
To bring you up to date, the following
software products have been centrallyfunded for Higher Education institutions, and
are therefore available to Computer Centres
at substantially reduced cost: UNIRAS, NAG
(for workstations), SPSS (for PCs), ORACLE,
INGRES, SIR, Ryan-MacFarland FORTRAN,
Prospero FORTRAN, Salford 386 FORTRAN,
BRS-SEARCH, and FTG’s Emu-tek. There
are also special CHEST discounts on
Ethernet cards for PCs marketed by Research
Machines and BICC). In addition CHEST
publicises details of literally hundreds of
software discounts for which you, as a
member of the Higher Education computing
community, are eligible. The list is published
once a year as the CHEST Directory but is
updated regularly on NISSBB (under section
D3D).
We are currently preparing the 1989 edition
of the CHEST Directory for publication and
also moving it into a database for public access over JANET. We hope that the former
will be sent out (to department heads again)
in the Autumn, and the latter will be ready
by the end of the year.
Electronic publishing
Two meetings were held earlier this year, at which topics related to Electronic Publishing
were presented by various experts in the field, including some from well-known manufacturers, such as Apple, Aldus, Adobe Systems and Xerox.
Landmarks in Electronic Publishing
This was a two-day meeting of the Electronic
Publishing Group of the British Computer
Society, held at Durham University. A description of the history and the main features
of the PostScript language was given: this
language is used to describe the appearance
of a printed page in a manner independent of the printing device. Further talks on
PostScript were given, on its advantages and
disadvantages when used directly: the main
use is not for direct programming but as a
standardised output from desktop publishing programs. The difficulties of converting
type fonts to a form suitable for dot-matrix
June 1989
printing were described, with some indications of how these problems were overcome
in practice.
The design of documents was introduced
from the viewpoint of document representation and general page description languages;
the possibility of document interchange
standards was discussed. The experience of
electronic publishing at the Open University
was described, noting the different technologies to be interconnected: Unix, MS Word,
Apple Macintosh, Sun and IBM PC, and
Ethernet. The requirements for more fonts,
9
mathematics and other scientific symbols,
music setting and photographs all presented
obstacles in the way of an integrated EP
system. The topic of integration was taken
further in a talk about the production of
The Independent, where there were additional
difficulties of communicaton between sites
in different cities, the employment of nontechnical staff, and the rapid editing both of
text content and of text and picture placing.
The teaching of desktop publishing to students at Exeter University was described,
giving an indication of course content, facilities available (based on IBM PC compatible
microcomputers) and the use of videos.
Both TEX and PageMaker were taught. The
history and the future of PageMaker itself
formed the topic of the last talk.
Electronic Publishing in Education
A Special Interest Group had been proposed,
to be set by the Apple University Consortium in order “to encourage the use of EP
methods in both teaching and research and
to act as a conduit for communication and
research between UK centres of further
education”. Areas of interest would include
desktop publishing and VDU-based ‘true’
electronic publishing systems.
Disk-based publishing could mean books
printed on demand in the shop, and online publishing would make possible faster
access. Home-based access would come
through teletext and TV publishing using
high-definition technology. There was a
warning about generally lower publishing
standards resulting from the wider availability of desktop publishing.
The first session was devoted to Apple and
EP and began with a survey of the recent
history of desktop publishing, based on
Apple Macintosh and the LaserWriter; cur­
rent use was being made by the professional
community, and future implications would
arise from the accessibility of EP and the
treatment of information in new ways. A
description of the features of PostScript
was given, followed by an application of
“hypertext” to an on-line information system
about Glasgow, which had been a great
success and was adaptable to information
about any city.
Electronic publishing in the multi-media
world was the subject of the next survey,
and then an account of the constraints on
designing with desktop publishing was
given by a typographer from Reading University. In the next session, the problem of
transferring graphics between EP programs
was discussed, including the difficulty of file
conversion. Then an alternative approach
to text design was proposed using mark-up
languages such as TEX and the international
SGML (Standard Generalised Markup Language). Finally, there was a long “wish list”
for EP: faster programs, character and word
counting routines, conversion from capitals,
a US–UK spelling translator, cheaper fonts,
more flexible style sheet facilities and intelligent help on-line.
The future of EP was examined, with the
coming of improved typography, file compatibility and handling of photographs.
Extensive details of the proceedings of these two meetings have been written by Peter Adamson and
are available from him at the Computing Laboratory (ex 8129, mail to CLSPA ).
June 1989
10
11
Serviceability figures
VAX Systems period:
MARCH 1989
Period Covered Time
Scheduled Preventive Maintenance
Scheduled Back-up Dumps
Scheduled Systems Development User Service
Time Lost:
Unscheduled maintenance
Hardware Faults
Other Lost Time
System Recovery Time
Notes:
APRIL 1989
Period Covered Time
Scheduled Preventive Maintenance
Scheduled Back-up Dumps
Scheduled Systems Development User Service
Time Lost:
Unscheduled maintenance
Hardware Faults
Other Lost Time
System Recovery Time
June 1989
SAVB
hrs:mins
SAVC
hrs:mins
744:00
1:30
8:00
0:00
734:30
744:00
1:30
11:15
0:00
731:15
744:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
744:00
0:00
0:00
(1) 1:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
(1) 1:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
(1) 1:00
0:00
(1) Power failure all circuits in computer room tripped off. Reset in plant
room.
VAX Systems period:
Notes:
SAVA
hrs:mins
SAVA
hrs:mins
SAVB
hrs:mins
SAVC
hrs:mins
720:00
0:00
7:45
0:00
702:15
720:00
0:00
8:15
0:00
731:15
720:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
720:00
2:45
58:40
(1) 0:30
0:00
0:00
0:00
(1) 0:30
0:00
0:00
0:00
(1) 0:30
0:00
(1) Power failure: all Systems crashed, 30mins lost.
(2) SAVA Interface Controller Power Supply failed, system down over weekend.
11
VAX Systems period:
MAY 1989
Period Covered Time
Scheduled Preventive Maintenance
Scheduled Back-up Dumps
Scheduled Systems Development User Service
Time Lost:
Unscheduled maintenance
Hardware Faults
Other Lost Time
System Recovery Time
Notes:
SAVA
hrs:mins
SAVB
hrs:mins
SAVC
hrs:mins
744:00
1:00
12:50
(2) 4:30
730:10
744:00
1:00
8:45
0:00
734:15
744:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
744:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
(1) SAVB printer down on 16th May fixed 18th May. Went down again on 26th
May fixed at 18:00hrs on 30th May.
(2) SAVA down for 4hrs 30mins for testing V5.
(3) SAVA DRA1: RM03 disc drive problems with controller errors on 23rd May.
DEC engineers worked on drive for 3 days fixed on Saturday 27th May.
For sale
For sale, available immediately: one Apricot Xi microcomputer, 512K RAM, 10Mb hard disk
and single 360K floppy drive, with VuWriter Personal word-processor and 12" monitor, £125
o.n.o.
For sale, available 1 September 1989: one Apricot Xi microcomputer, 512K RAM, dual 360K
floppy drives, with VuWriter Professional word-processor and 12" monitor, £125 o.n.o. Epson
SQ2000 ink-jet printer with sheet feeder, £200 o.n.o
Contact: Stephen Read, Department of Logic and Metaphysics, extension 574 or 565.
June 1989
12
Ten years ago . . .
The Newsletter for June 1979 referred once
again to the complicated systems timetable
required for running the IBM 360/44 system
with three different systems: the 44MFT system was a simple multiprogramming system
based on batch jobs, and RAX was a remote
access system which allowed 24 interactive
users and was used for teaching. In addition
there was the ordinary IBM OS/360 which
was available, mainly in the evenings, for the
more standard IBM 360 software and for its
extra facilities. Each of these systems had a
different Fortran compiler with varying degrees of severity over minor errors.
The existing data preparation service was
improved at this time, and offered typing
onto punched cards or (via terminals) to the
Aberdeen Honeywell 66/80 and the Dundee
DEC System 10. These remote services were
used for specialised software and to relieve
the load on the IBM 360/44 which was now
coming to the end of its working life. In the
same issue were announcements of new versions of Pascal and the SURFACE II graphics
system at Aberdeen.
A survey of the use of microcomputers in the
University was announced – an early indication of things to come during the 1980s . . .
VAX systems timetable summary – Summer vacation: 10 June to 7 October 1989
Back-up Dumps: SAVA:
SAVB:
SAVC:
Mondays from 07:00 for about 4 hours:
12 26 Jun 10 24 Jly 7 21 Aug 4 18 Sep 2 Oct
19 Jun 3 17 31 Jly 14 28 Aug 11 25 Sep
every Tuesday (on-line to users)
Preventive Maintenance:
SAVA:
SAVB:
SAVC:
09:30–12:00
} Tuesdays: 27 Jun 25 Jly 29 Aug 26 Sep
12:00–14:00
as required
Operator Covered Time:
Monday–Friday
07:00–18:00
Access to John Honey Building:
(the Computing Laboratory)
Monday–Friday
Saturday
08:00–17:45
closed
John Honey Building, North Haugh, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9SX. Telephone (0334) 76161
June 1989