Rice microcomputers to be linked in Owlnet
The following article appeared in the Oct. 5, 1984, issue of The Rice Thresher . It appears in its original grammatical form.
This summer, the Institute of Computer Services and Applications and the Computer Science Department directed the development of a campus wide mail network for microcomputers. The software required to use the network, dubbed "Owlnet," will be distributed free to members of the Rice community after a demonstration today at 4 p.m. in Herman Brown 227.
According to graduate student Carl Rosene, who led the development team for the IBM 4341 and PC Owlnet software, the procedure for acquiring an Owlnet account is quite simple. Persons wishing to use the system simply create their own accounts in what Rosene called a "self-log-on procedure." After creating the account, they can send and receive mail via any properly-connected microcomputer on campus.
At first, mail will be limited to normal text, but the ability to send executable programs and other binary files should be available soon. Though limited, this mail utility should prove a useful alternative to campus mail and even the telephone, providing a valuable facility for collecting messages for individuals without answering machines or secretaries.
Though the capability will exist for entering text while logged onto Owlnet, the use of this facility is encouraged for all but the shortest of messages. The number of lines that can be connected to the central mainframe computer at any one moment is so small, so users are encouraged to compose messages with their own editing programs before connecting to the network.
ICSAs and computer science are providing Owlnet as a free service to the Rice community, an arrangement that is not expected to change in the foreseeable future. Test versions of the Owlnet software will be distributed after the demonstration; Macintosh users desiring copies should bring a blank diskette. The programs necessary to communicate with Owlnet are currently implemented for the IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh, but Rosene noted, "We hope and assume that programmers from the student body will write software that will link their type of computer to the system." This way, sophisticated users could remove the burden of writing software for every possible computer from ICSA and computer-science researchers and could then distribute the software to owners of similar computers.
Rosene stressed the "testing" aspect of the current release of Owlnet: "People who get software are not going to have a perfect system, They're expected to find bugs." The discovery of these problems will enable the developers to make improvements and corrections. Said Rosene, "Service will be changing, even on a weekly basis." Until the binary file transfer utility is functional, however, users will have to go back and copy the new versions instead of receiving them conveniently over the network.
Owlnet is currently available only through a DTI (Data Terminal Interface) connected to a data line leading directly to Rice's ROLM telephone switching system. Unfortunately, the number of the expensive ($500) DTIs is currently limited, with two being allocated to each college, and four each for Macintoshes and IBM PCs in the Mudd building. Those with modems should soon be able to call in and log on throughout the ROLM switch as well. The benefits of the DTI arrangement are a high data transfer rate -- 9600 baud, as compared with 300 or 1200 baud for most modems -- and a more secure communications link less subject to static.
The lack of DTIs is a major limitation for Owlnet at the moment. For their two DTIs, each college is supposed to have a hundred data lines connected to the switch, each of which could be hooked up to a DTI.
Rice undergraduate and graduate students wrote most of the software for the network. Rosene's group developed the programs for the IBM 4341( the "post-office" for the mail network) and for the IBM personal computers.
Undergraduate Kim Taylor led the second group , which wrote the software for the Apple Macintosh. Dr. Ken Kennedy, chairman of computer science, supervised the IBM group, while Professor Don Johnson of electrical engineering, who is faculty liaison to the Apple University Consortium, oversaw the Macintosh programmers.
A third set of students, working directly for ICSA, is writing software to convert word-processing files between three formats: Wordstar of the IBM PC, MacWrite for the Macintosh, and Script for ICSA's AS/9000. The ICSA mainframe is connected to a laser printer, so this utility should eventually allow users of Owlnet to obtain far higher quality than that available on inexpensive personal printers. The development of this feature is expected to be complete by the end of this semester, said Rosene.
The IBM 4341 on which Owlnet is being created came to Rice as part of a research agreement between IBM and a computer science research group led by Kennedy. As such, it will not be able to handle a very large network. ICSA plans to move Owlnet onto the AS/9000 at some point; however, the exact stage at which the transfer will take place has not been decided.
This item appeared in the Anniversary section of the March 29, 1996 issue.
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