Some of the people who made it happen...
R. Balasubramanian is one of our resident Linux experts, and did a lot
of initial benchmarking work which established that for our purposes the
DEC 300XL had a 50% higher performance/price ratio than any other alternative.
He also took part in every phase of setup, installation and operations.
Jim Generotsky putting in our shelving. Jim is one of the technicians in
the Physics Department, and did most of the work setting up the mechanical
parts of our facility.
Bruce Allen (that's me, your tireless narrator and the guy with the "fiduciary
responsibility") standing in front of the shelving unit, about 2/3 of the
way through the installation. Jim Generotsky is in the background, working
on shelving for the machine-room desk. Notice the heaps of keyboards and
the large rolls of CAT-5 ethernet cabling on the shelf. In the background
is the Physics Department's networking switching units (inside the security
cage). Notice that each machine has been labeled with (1) the DEC serial
number (2) the node name (ie N023) and (3) the hardware ethernet address
(this actually appears on a sticker on each DE500 fast ethernet card and
is recorded when the card is installed). In this (picture you.jpg can also see
the back of the two 24-port networking switches, and a cable (3Com calls
it a "matrix cable") connecting the two switch units. This provides a Gbit/sec
link between the two networking switches, and enables them to function
as a single 48-port switch.
Warren Anderson is another of our Linux experts, and has spent a few late
nights (including one session that started after he got home from playing
hockey at 1 AM) figuring out some of these issues involved in getting things
going. He also participated in most aspects of the assembly.
Mike Mitchell and Jim Generotsky working on the shelving.
Our hard-working business manager Susan Arthur. Without Sue's help, this
whole project would have been a lot harder and taken a lot longer!
Sue in her domain, surrounded by heaps of purchase orders! [By the way,
copies of most of these are on our web site, if you want to see exactly
what we bought, where we got it, and how much it cost.