HMC Mathematics Computing Weblog

I ended up doing some fairly significant work in the machine room Thursday afternoon and evening, which involved rewiring the entire rack. In order to be sure that some of the systems were working properly, I rebooted several of the machines in the rack, including the department's main file server (gytha) and our parallel compute server hex. As a result, some workstations -- especially Mac OS X machines -- may be confused about their NFS mounts. If you have problems logging in or if you can log in but you can't access your home directory or applications or other materials stored in /shared/local, please reboot the machine and try again.

I'm about to go to bed, but I will be reachable at home or by cell tomorrow if there are any unforeseen issues.

You should be able to print to wuffles now using math department Linux systems, Macintoshes with Mac OS X, and Windows machines.

Please see my earlier message for details on the name and IP address of the printer. Drivers are available from our wuffles page.

Note for Linuxy types trying to set things up on their own: I haven't been able to get the copier to behave using straight CUPS and the PPD file; it seems to work just fine when I install the BrightQ drivers available from canon.codehost.com. I still want to get the thing working without the additional software, but in lieu of the looming start of the semester, I'm tabling it 'til later.

I have added support information, including drivers and some of the secondary applications (e.g., scanner-interface software) for the new Canon imageRunner 8070 copier to the department's computing website.

The copier will be called wuffles, at least on the math network, and has the IP address 134.173.34.138 for those of you playing from home.

wuffles will, we hope, be up and running on Friday.

Enjoy!

You may have heard (or seen, as it's in the hallway) that we're getting a new networked copier. The new machine is a Canon imageRunner 8070, and will be replacing our existing imageRunner 5000, fluffy.

The new copier has several major improvements over the old model, including

1. Much faster -- 80 ppm instead of 50 ppm
2. Higher resolution -- 2400x600 dpi instead of 600 dpi
3. More stapled sets -- 100 stapled sets (or 1000 pages) instead of 30 sets (or 1000 pages)
4. Thicker stapled documents -- 100 pages instead of 50
5. Better Mac support! (Including a Mac port of Command Workstation and scanner software; alas, they're Java.)
6. Hole-punching on-the-fly, eliminating the expense of buying prepunched paper and problems feeding it through the machine.
7. No longer a departmental copier; this one is a ``production'' copier. (I think that basically means that if we spent a bunch more money we could get several additional bits that would allow it to produce neatly trimmed booklets with heavier, colored covers; or to generate form letters ready for stuffing and mailing after being folded, stapled, and so forth. We don't have any of that stuff, of course.)

From the manual, it sounds like it could potentially do a whole slew of additional things, some of which might actually be useful, however, we apparently haven't actually paid to turn any of that additional functionality on. We won't know for absolute certain what we have and what we don't until we can plug the thing in and get it running.

The downside of the newer, faster, stronger model is that it uses more electricity. As a result, we will need to have the electrical socket rewired. As fluffy also uses more juice than your average household incinerator, and there isn't room for two crazy sockets in the same box, we will have to take the old copier offline, then have the electrical work done, then have Canon come out and assemble and configure the new copier. That pretty much guarantees a downtime of a day or two while we coordinate several teams of workers. Oh, and Canon shipped us (or ordered us) the wrong finishing unit, so we can't really go ahead until we have the right one anyway.

You'll hear more when we know it -- in the meantime, I am in the process of assembling webpages with pointers to the software that you'll need to use the new copier. I'll announce that here once it's in place.

I have installed gaspode in the Math Workroom (Olin-1264). It should be available for general use as of this writing.

You can obtain drivers, instructions, and other useful information for using this printer from its new webpage.

I have also added similar pages for the other ``public'' printers. They're all accessible from our printing support page (which has been up for some time).

Enjoy!

We have taken delivery of a new color printer, gaspode, a Hewlett Packard Color LaserJet 5550dtn.

This printer was a gift from Hewlett Packard and its Hardcopy Technologies Lab's director, John Meyer. We would not have received this generous gift without the work of Professor Mike Raugh, our department's Clinic Director.

gaspode replaces winter, our Minolta-QMS magiColor 6100. The new printer is much faster (up to 27 pages per minute in black and white or color) and uses HP's imageRET technology to achieve resolutions of up to 3600 dpi.

Information on printing to the new printer is available on our math computing support website. (Please use this link, as this information is not yet tied into the site as a whole; I expect to create similar pages for each printer in the near future.)

Please thank Mike Raugh for obtaining this printer for the department.