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Governance Minutes ArchiveApril 4, 1990
MINUTES COMPUTER COMMITTEE FOURTH FLOOR BURRUSS HALL BOARD ROOM APRIL 4, 1990 3 PM PRESENT: Don Allison, Jeff Birch, John Burton, John Cosgriff, David Goodyear, Fred Medley, Harlan Miller, Jim Montgomery, Richard Sorensen, Jim Thomas, Jeff Wilcke, Mike Williams ABSENT: Jim Baranowski, Darrell Bosch, Bob Heterick, Jim Hicks, Katherine Johnston, Dennis Jones, Tom McAnge, Joan McClain-Kark, Ernie Stout, Barbara Young VISITOR(S): Barbara Robinson and Bill Sanders (Computing Center) Dennis Catley (Institutional Research) AGENDA ITEM 1: MINUTES OF THE MARCH 7, 1990 MEETING Motion made, seconded and passed to approve the minutes of the March meeting. AGENDA ITEM 2: COMPUTING CENTER REPORT (WILLIAMS) With the bleak budgetary picture, funding for a system upgrade in 1990-92 is felt to be improbable. The Computing Center has redi- rected some of its resources to the purchase of additional mem- ory, therefore, to try to postpone the problems associated with saturation of the mainframe systems. Purchase of additional cen- tral memory for the 3084 and possibly extended memory for the 3090 will decrease paging, the area of greatest concern. The Computing Center Computer Purchasing office has been in oper- ation for six months, and is running smoothly. The small but highly motivated staff handled 33% of the total University requi- sitions in the first quarter of this year. In the past two months, 2/3 of all requisitions not requiring sealed bids and 90% of contract items have had purchase orders written within a week. (Sealed bids, by law, have a waiting period of 21 days.) Betty Hillis, Computer Purchasing's buyer, was this year's recipient of the MSL Responsiveness Award. AGENDA ITEM 3: SUBCOMMITTEE REPORTS 1. Computer Capacity and Planning Subcommittee (Allison) The subcommittee submitted its report describing mainframe computer usage. VM1 is not quite saturated, VM2 has some spare capacity, while MVS is saturated. In the discussion it was pointed out that University budget- ary managers use the SMART dollar system to handle the allo- cation of mainframe computer resources. Imbalances that occurred several years ago have been corrected and dollars in the system are now roughly comparable to the capacity avail- able. The SMART dollar system will continue to effectively allocate resources even as the systems reach saturation. 2. Personal Computer Subcommittee (Sorenson) The subcommittee submitted its recommendations concerning PC purchases, laboratories, software and oversight. Several of the recommendations relate to the bookstore's pricing policies for hardware and software. In the dis- cussion, it was decided that the committee chairman would ar- range to deliver those recommendations to the bookstore's board of directors. Recommendations on Computing Center support of PC's will be referred to the User Services Subcommittee for further exam- ination next year, while the suggestion to provide laser printing will be explored further by the PC subcommittee. The Personal Computer Subcommittee's recommendations were ac- cepted by the Computer Committee as recommended policy. AGENDA ITEM 4: ADDITIONS TO THE AGENDA none The chairman will develop subcommittee charges for the next year and prepare the yearly report to the University Council. His term as chairman ends this summer, however, and the committee will be operating under a new chairman, to be announced, next year. The next meeting will be held on September 5 at 3 p.m. in Burruss 400. Meeting adjourned at 3:54 p.m.
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