Central Systems Group

     Although the impression seems to be around that the sole raison  d'etre  of
CSG  is  to  write  ever more sophisticated operating systems,   it is the other
activities that absorbed most effort this term.

     1) The Filestore is receiving substantial software  effort  in  preparation
     for direct attachment to the CPSE.  This involves a change of communication
     protocols from NSI to X25.

     2) The 2976 has had a spate of crashes due primarily to faults in the  DAPs
     when acting as store.   DAP store appears to go incommunicado after certain
     hardware faults unlike normal store.   To  live  through  such  faults  the
     Supervisor  has  been altered to ensure all vital pages are kept out of DAP
     store and EMAS now runs through DAP multibit failures.

     3) The 2988 is about to move to Kings Buildings and share peripherals  with
     the 2976.  The changes needed to device driving and archiving strategies to
     accommodate shared peripherals are being evaluated.

     4) A visit has been made to DEC and CDC to evaluate  alternative  operating
     regimes.    A  separate  report is has been written but EMAS still compares
     exceeding well with these "state of the art" systems. Most EMAS users would
     get a negative return from the considerable effort needed to transfer their
     work to a new system.

     5)  On  the  VAX/VMS  Servive  a  significant  number  of  the  outstanding
     developments on the service have been completed,  the regularisation of the
     file system  backup  procedures  and  the  installation  of  the  Cranfield
     spooling package being amongst the most important.  The work on the VMS end
     of XTALK has been postponed because of changes to the terminal  handler  in
     version  4 of VMS,   due to be installed later this summer.   The two major
     demands from the users are an archive facility  and  better  utilities  for
     handling IBM magnetic tapes.  Whilst these latter topics are being actively
     considered,   the main effort over the next month or two must be to build a
     VMS  version  4  system  and gain experience of that before putting it into
     service later this summer.

     6) Work has continued on the Amdahl at  as  fast  a  pace  as  these  other
     activities  have  permitted.    The team are all established on the "final"
     subsystem and can live with the current restrictions.   A few genuine users
     are now accredited and can be seen working.

                                                             P.Stephens
                                                              20/May/85