Status Report for eAKeith Ball
April 25 thru April 29


eHTasks in processe@


       1) I have completed the first milestone defined in my schedule.
          The unitread and unitwrite sections of the CCOS driver are
          complete.  I have tested the driver with the default 1,0,0
          and 2,6,1 logical interleave/skew/track.  The 2,6,1 is 5
          times faster.  We can format the disk with this structure
          and use a 1,0,0 logical structure.

          Lynn has said he will have the prom source ready for me by
          Monday.  The I will begin on my conversion of the driver.

          Ken said the new boards will be available next week.  I have
          1 and will get 2 more boards with the 32 byte proms.

       2) I attended the Companion drive project meeting.  Brett has
          all the details.  We must define the interface to the
          system for the next meeting.

       3) I attended a Printer server meeting on April 29.  Phil's
          group now has complete control of the project.  Steve Wang
          will implement the software.

          The main priority for the group is supporting the Concept.
          It will do character enhancements among other text
          processing.  Work now done in the Spooler will be done in
          the server.

          Phil's group will come out with a complete spec on the
          server and it's interface.  This means a definition of the
          preamble block and the text structure.  I assume Denise will
          develop a spec for the spoolers.

          I brought up the need for a command or program interface for
          all the servers as well as the currently required terminal
          emulator interface.  Phil has it under consideration.

eHTasks plannede@

       1) Plan to begin the development of the Omninet and Local disk
          driver and the Network Manager (specified by Phil B) after
          completion of the Floppy release.  Both of these pieces of
          system software use the Transporter driver which was
          developed last year.  Phil says he needs these additions to
          the system to develop Virtual Circuits(VCS).  I will begin
          to spend some time on reworking the Transporter driver in
          mid-May when Phil returns from vacation.

          This work is the first step in my specifying what needs to
          be done to integrate the Concept and the Network.  I will
          work with Phil on VCS and the internet protocols.  Phil has
          already given me Xerox publications on the internet protocol
          and remote procedure calls.  Remote procedure calls allow
          other nodes to execute procedures in remote nodes.  Problems
          may occur with the implementation of VCS, internet
          protocols, and the network manager integration depending on
          the degree of multi-tasking available on our next system.

          Phil says he really needs multi-tasking to implement
          his network software.

       2) The Bank.  I must get involved with Bank development.  The
          debug procedure entails building a local card for the
          Concept.  Therefore, should we have a local bank?  Bob is
          very much in favor of the idea.  Should we boot from the
          damn thing??


eHProblems/needse@

       1) Since the Floppy disk controller has a the step rate bug, we
          cannot run the drive with a 3 millisecond step rate.
          Without this capability we cannot keep the Shugart drive
          quiet.

          Ken and I tried the Shugart at 4 ms. step rate at it is
          noisy.  It seems to run reasonably well at 3 ms. but needs
          further testing.  I will develop some level of test
          software to examine it's reliability when the FDC is
          configured for 3 ms.

          We could have a driver default as 4 ms. and have a startup
          file to reconfigure the driver to 3 ms. for Concepts with
          the Shugart drives.  I feel this would cause the user and us
          more management problems then being able to use the Shugart
          would solve.

       2) The current Omninet disk driver does not work correctly
          with multiple disk servers.  I will investigate with Phil
          why after I finish the floppy.  Unfortunately, the boot
          proms do not work correctly either.  Should we release when
          our system doesn't work with our network correctly?

       3) How do we wish to interface to the Utility server.  I think
          it should have a terminal interface AND a eAprogram interfacee@.
          The program interface would include functions like add user
          xxxx or delete volume yyyy.  We could then write a special
          Concept human interface to the Constellation II software
          running on the Utility server instead of using the simpler
          less elegant interface provided by the Utility server.