CSL
In the school year of 1977-1978, Emile Attala formally established the Computer Systems Laboratory with 375 square feet of space and one technician, Ralph Nicovich, allocated with Jay Bayne as the faculty director. By Spring quarter 1983, the space had grown to 1800 square feet by the addition of 14-238 and the space doubled later in the summer with the addition of 14-235. By 1983, the CSL staff maintained the computer literacy facilities, the faculty office systems and the department computer systems as well as CSL software and hardware.
By May, 1985, CSL consisted of a half-time faculty Director and a technical and administrative support of four. Approximately 1.5 of the 4 positions are for hardware maintenance and support, 2.0 for system software support, and 0.5 for administrative support. There is 4,200 square feet of floor space, including a well equipped repair and maintenance shop. CSL houses over $2 million worth of hardware and software.
As of 1985, the CSL Advisory Committee consisted of Beug, Grimes, Keller, Hsu, Stubbs, and Webre with Joseph Grimes as the Faculty Director. Staff members Gilbert Keas, and Haley Landis handled software support with Neal Pollack dealing with hardware and Alan Bell as software manager. Daniel Stearns followed Joseph Grimes in 1985 as Faculty Director of CSL.
Don Erickson, CSL Director since 1987.
Neal Pollack left Cal Poly in the Spring of 1987, and the department hired Don Erickson for CSL manager. Don, our current manager, commented, “that every piece of equipment since he started has been replaced and every network restructured.” He estimates that the equipment in CSL is worth over $10 million. Ron Oliver, and Chris Buckalew have served as Faculty Directors over the years as well as various Department chairmen.
The mission of the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL) is to provide equipment, facilities, and support for the instructional and research objectives of the Computer Science Department, including Computer Engineering and Software Engineering programs.
The CSL manager is responsible for:
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Overall supervision of the CSL.
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Long and short range planning and budgeting.
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Outside liaison.
All hardware maintenance is done in-house. A well equipped workshop is available. Hardware maintenance contracts are not cost-effective. The service of a field engineer has been required only three times in past six years.
Software maintenance contract is maintained for HP product. A limited software maintenance contract (OS only) is maintained for SUN equipment. CSL maintains computers (hardware and software), network connection, and printing facilities for all faculty, teaching assistants, and staff offices.
1988 CSL staff members, Left to Right: Gilbert Keas, Haley Landis, and Alan Bell.
To appreciate how the CSL functions, technology, and equipment have evolved, included is a snapshot of the lab equipment in 1988 and a summary of it in 2002.
In 1987, when Don Erickson became manager of the CSL, the main Csc computer was the Pyramid 98X.[^34] The operating system was OSx which supports both AT&T System V Release 3, and Berkeley 4.3 BSD system calls with a translation module on top of the Unix Kernel. It had 26 Megabytes of main memory, five Megabytes of Ram disk, six Megabytes for the operating system and buffers, 15 Megabytes for user programs, and 1.2 Gigibytes of disk space. It had 64 ports, 32 of which connected directly to devices in the CSL while the other 32 were connected to devices on campus networks.
The CSL had six Sun 3/50 Workstations, two color Sun 3/60 Workstations, and one 3/280 Sun File Server which had eight Megabytes of memory. All eight workstations had four Megabytes RAM memory and an Ethernet connection to campus networks. They run Sun OS 4.0, which included networking file system (NFS), interface to System V Unix and 4.3 BSD Unix, X Windows, NEWS, and connections to campus networks.
Hewlett Packard 64000 lab consisted of a cluster of four HP 64000, a Unix file and print server, printers, together with pods and boards for the following processors: 6502, 8080, 8086, 68000 series. Cross assemblers and cross compilers were available for all of these architectures. A student wrote code on the 64000 or on the Unix machine, debugged it carefully on either machine and then downloaded it to the board containing the embedded system for further testing. If all works well, an eprom can be created and the board removed to function as an independent system.
There was an internal network which connected all machines together and the Unix machine was connected to campus networks. This lab was used primarily for microprocessor courses, CSC 309 and CSC 409. HP 64000 accounts are granted for senior projects or independent research as well.
There were three types of printers available to students: 1. highspeed, 2. laser, and 3. line printer. All printers can be accessed from all accounts.
The Sequent, affectionately know as Phantom, had ten National Semiconductor 32032 processors, two 220 Megabyte disk drives, and operated with Dynix Version 3.0.4, a parallel programming version of Unix. The Sequent was used for special projects, and a parallel processing class taught by Professor Len Myers. The Sequent was connected to the CSL’s Ethernet for communications between CSL systems and external communication.
There were four Hewlett Packard Vectras in the CSL, used as graphic workstations. The Vectras were IBM PC AT compatible, with Drive A being a 1.2 Megabyte high-density drive and Drive B being a 360 Kbyte low-density drive. They ran on an 80286 processor, had 640 K of memory, used an Enhanced Graphic Adapter, EGA, and had a parallel and a serial port. The CSL added a Number Nine graphics card and a High Resolution RGB Graphic Monitor to each HP Vectra. Primarily the CSC 455 and CSC 456 classes used these workstations, but they were also used on a special project basis as well.
The CSL had a terminal room in 14-238. Using these terminals, one could use any CSL computer and also use the campus SLONET network to log on to other computers on campus.
Diagram of a 1988 CSL Network, the Pyramid 98X, Sequent Balance 8000, Sun Workstations, a PBX switch, and a connection to SLONET which connected to external networks.
The CSL Ethernet allowed users to interact with host systems in the CSL through session serving and file serving as well as connecting to networks external to Cal Poly.
SLONET: Cal Poly Network SLONET connected all the Local Area Networks (LANs) on campus to one another. It connected campus resources and department resources together. Some computers were connected directly to SLONET, whereas the CSL’s Ethernet is connected to SLONET via a bridge. SLONET was a broadband network which connected the CSL LAN to all the other LANs around campus, allowing access to other computer resources on campus.
Computer Science staff, Left to right: Don Erickson, Ellen Stier, Alan Bell, Diane Goldman, Gilbert Keas, and Haley Landis.
The following describes the lab functions and resources. Note that we have a mixture of labs dedicated to particular functions together with general purpose labs. All facilities are fully networked. All labs have local printing facilities and are equipped with data projectors.
Building 14-303;
Provides access to all campus computing facilities. 25 NT workstations with C, C++, Java, Web support and full network connection.
Building 14-302
Provides specialized database support and other classes needing lab support. 25 NT workstations with C, C++, Java, Oracle 8i. software available and full network connectivity.
Building 20-124
Provides specialized networking support for networking courses and senior projects. Cisco network routers, firewalls, hubs, along with dual boot Windows NT and Linux machines. The laboratory configuration offers enough equipment for 32 students to perform network experiments simultaneously, using switches, hubs, routers with Voice Over IP as well as ATM, fast ethernet, token ring, and ISDN capabilities.
Byron Smith, technician Computer Systems Laboratory.
Building 14-232
Laboratory dedicated for Operating System classes only. 19 HP Kayak XA Pentium II/450 bootable to Linux, Minux, or Windows NT. Fully network connected with printer facilities.
Building 14-232
Laboratory dedicated for Graphics and Expert Systems. 20 Sun Ultra-10s running Unix with Java and Java 3D, one Indy with Presenter screen display, 4 SGI 320 PCs running 3D Studio Max.
Building 14-256
Laboratory dedicated for software engineering. PCs running Windows and Linux OS. Supports all C, C++, Java, Web support and includes Rational Rose, and Java Case tools.
Building 14-255, 14-257
Computer architecture and 16 PCs with Windows and Linux . Also used for computer literacy. PCs dual boots Windows and Linux with Java, C, C++ and assembly.
Building 14-235
All classes. PCs running Windows.
Building 14-301
Graduate research with PCs, Unix workstations and Unix server.
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SUN E450 (falcon) Permanent accounts for faculty and staff,
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SUN E450 (hornet) Permanent accounts for students,
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SUN E250 (tiedye) Web server,
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SUN E240 (waldorf) Software engineering and senior projects,
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SUN E250 (pesto) Graduate research,
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SUN E450 (hercules) Oracle DBS,
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SUN E250 (tiedye2) Oracle DBS,
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NT Server (ntsvr3) Oracle DBS, MsSQL Sun,
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690 (cscnews) News server,
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SUN E450 (statler) Faculty file server,
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SUN E250 and 14 NT servers provide dedicated server support for each lab.