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Further reading □ Overview33. Start of year34. Hardware35. Communications36. UNIX37. ACCENT UNIX38. Dalkeith closure39. User Support40. Software41. Assessment42. SUSSG43. PERQ - DAP44. PERQ orders45. Critique of 1983
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ACDSingle User SystemsPERQ HistoryPart VII
ACDSingle User SystemsPERQ HistoryPart VII
ACL ACD C&A INF CCD CISD Archives
Further reading

Overview
33. Start of year
34. Hardware
35. Communications
36. UNIX
37. ACCENT UNIX
38. Dalkeith closure
39. User Support
40. Software
41. Assessment
42. SUSSG
43. PERQ - DAP
44. PERQ orders
45. Critique of 1983

1983

33. POSITION AT START OF 1983

33.1 Staffing

At the start of 1983, the project had as many people working on it as was available during the life of the project. To give some breakdown of effort used compared with what was bid for and what was allocated, it is worth looking at the following table:

Financial
Year
Bid Allocation Effort Used
1979/80 0 0 0.5
1980/81 0 0 0.5
1981/82 15 0 4.5
1982/83 15 8 10.5

By March 1983, the project had consumed about 16 MY of effort compared with a bid of 30 MY and an allocation of 8 MY. The remaining 8 MY used on the project came from sympathetic EB projects such as DCS, STI and ICF. No effort came from other Boards.

The usage in 1982/3 was approximately broken down:

Function Man Years
Hardware/Operations/Te1ecomms 3.0
User Support/Resource Management 1.5
System/Application Development 5.0
Local Area Networking 1.0
TOTAL 10.5

Against a bid of at least 15 MY for 1983/4, an allocation of 9 MY was received from Central Computing Committee. For the third year running, the project was to be starved of manpower.

33.2 PERQs

At the end of 1982, SERC had ordered 101 PERQs with 4 not delivered. The breakdown of these systems was:

EB Grants and Pool 14
SB Grants and Pool 8
NPB Pool 4
EBCC/ICF 10
Software Technology Pool 10
DCS 9
Common Base Project 8
Daresbury 1
Central Office 1
Instrumentation Div, RAL 1
Robotics 1
DoI Office Pilots 9
SUSPENSE 15
TOTAL 101

The SERC Council had purchased 30 PERQ systems in the second half of 1982 of which 10 were for EB, 5 for SB and 15 to be held in SUSPENSE awaiting additional bids for PERQs on grants.

Of these, 56 systems were with users, and about 20 were being used for software development. The remaining 25 were the 15 SUSPENSE systems, 3 unallocated NP systems, 6 unallocated SB systems.

The systems being used for software development were:

DCS 3
Common Base Project 4
Office Automation 9
EB Pool 4
TOTAL 20

The two SB PERQs were with Prof Blundell and Prof Murrell.

The 56 systems were distributed across about 25 universities with Edinburgh having the most with 7 systems followed by UMIST with 5.

All the systems were running the POS operating system. With the POS filestore being incompatible with the PNX filestore (ICL had named microcode UNIX as PNX), there was a significant interruption of service before users could move from POS to PNX.

33.3 Maintenance

SERC had received a significant reduction in ICL's maintenance charges on the understanding that it was centrally negotiated, financed and administered. Boards were asking if universities could pay maintenance from their grant funds and a great deal of negotiation took place.

The agreement with ICL was to pay maintenance quarterly in advance. By the end of 1982, SERC was a year behind in payment due to these protracted negotiations and it was essential that it got settled before the end of the financial year.

Discussions concerning Board contributions to the Common Base group continue in 1985 even though this gives them a significant decrease in maintenance charges.

33.4 Challenge for 1983

The challenge for 1983 was to get UNIX available on all the PERQ systems, together with the other software in the Common Base, and to provide good support for the users of those systems.

The second major task was to assess the market for a second single user system to add to the hardware Common Base as was always intended.

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