Jennifer announced that Saar volunteered to be the OCF's representative to the Engineering Joint Council last week and has been appointed to that position to replace Nevin, who resigned.
Jennifer then asked for people's reports on the systems the OCF is considering purchasing with next year's funding and the remainder of this year's.
Kenji reported that a DEC Personal Alpha starter system would cost $4500 with a small disk, 16 megabytes of RAM, and a color monitor. For another $2500 the machine could be expanded to 64 megs RAM. He also reported that an IBM RS/6000 C10 with an 80 megahertz PowerPC 601 processor, 32 megs RAM, and a 1 gigabyte hard drive would cost approximately $9,000.
Erik Agee reported that he had two quotes for Pentium-based systems. The first was $5,200 for a Pentium 90 with a 4.2 gigabyte disk and 32 megs RAM. For an extra $1200 the machine could be upgraded to 64 megs RAM, and an ethernet card was $210 extra.
Erik's second quote was also for a Pentium 90 system. This one, from DSI, cost $4,600 for a 2.1 gig hard disk, 32 megs RAM, an ethernet card, and a 2 year on-site warrantty.
Nevin reported that by just grabbing the best prices for each component in the copy of Computer Currents he had at the meeting he had put together a system that cost $5,709 and that included a Pentium 90, 64 megs RAM, 5 gigs of disk space, and ethernet support.
Andrew reported that once he convinced the Sun sales rep he wasn't interested in a $100,000 Sparc Center, he was quoted $12,000 list for a Sun Sparc 20 with 32 megs of RAM and a 530 meg hard disk, but that with our 40% off discount, it would cost around $7,000.
Andrei Cogan reported that based on his calculations the OCF would need about $7,000-$8,000 worth of used Sparc IPC's and 2's to support all the users, and while that included RAM, it didn't account for any disk space for the machines.
Amee reported that the campus was offered a free site license for BSD/OS in the past, but the University turned it down. She is currently working with BSDI to see if this offer still stands. She pointed out that BSD/OS has the advantage that it would work both on a Pentium if we bought one as well as the Sparcs we already have (once the Sparc version of BSD/OS comes out this spring that is).
Marco argued that the only two solutions we could afford were new Pentiums or used Sparcs. He summarized the arguments for and against those two platforms as follows:
It was decided that since the actual system did not need to be specified in the budget request, we would go ahead with our request of $11,000 and continue collecting information to decide which system we will spend it on.
Jennifer reported that she talked to Kiran, the person in charge of allocating space in the EJC office, about our desk there. Since the space is supposed to be for groups that can't get their own offices elsewhere, they'd like us to give up our desk in 220 Bechtel now that we have office space in Eshleman. Since we only use our desk for storage and we have enough space in the Eshleman office to store everything that's currently in Bechtel, this will not pose a hardship to the OCF. The Board voted 13-0 in favor of giving up our desk in the EJC office as soon as we get the contents moved to Eshleman.
The meeting was closed at 8:45 pm. The next meeting will be Tuesday, February 28, 1995 in 120A Bechtel at 7 pm.