Computers History
The following table gives some information about the computers we have used since our first CS lab back in 1986. Below that are the names of our student system administrators who have helped keep the CS systems up and running!
We also have a Machine Specs Table that we try to keep current, if you're interested in the specs for our lab machines.
| Year | Server | Approx. Server Cost | Details | CS Lab Machines |
| 1986 | Sun 3/160 | $39K | 4MB mem, 380MB disk, 1600 BPI 1/2" tape, SunOS 3.4? | six diskless Sun 3/50M-4 monochrome workstations (later upgraded to 12MB of memory), four ASCII terminals |
| 1992 | Sun SPARC 2 | $19K | 64MB mem, 3x1.3GB disks, SunCD, SCSI, SunOS 4.1.2 | six Sun ELC monochrome workstations and two Sun IPC color workstations |
| 1996 | Sun Ultra 170E | $23K | 256MB mem, 2x2GB disks, CD, Solaris 2.5.1 | seven SunELCs, 3 SunIPCs, one Sun SPARC 4, six color X-terminals |
| 1998 | Sun E450 | $26K | 2x250MHz CPUs, 512MB mem, 5x4.2GB disks, CD, 14GB 8mm tape drive, Solaris 2.6 | 16 workstations (Ultra 10s, U170s, Sparc4, etc), 8 HDS X-terminals |
| 2003 | Penguincomputing Relion 225 | $12K | 2x1.1GHz PIII CPUs, 1GB mem, 54GB disk + 8x73GB external RAID, dual 10/100 eth, VXA-1 tape drive, Debian Linux | 24 x86 Linux workstations, plus Robot Lab machines |
| 2006 | pogolinux.com PerformanceWare 1464 | $5K | 2x1.8GHz Opteron 244 CPUs, 4GB mem, 144GB disk (plus still using 8-disk external RAID), dual 100/1000 eth, VXA-2 tape drive, Debian Linux | around 50 Linux workstations in our main, overflow, and robot labs. most are x86, some are dual-processor opterons. |
| 2014 | siliconmechanics.com Rackform nServ A346.v4 | $5K | 2x3.5GHz Opteron 6308 CPUs, 128GB mem, 6x1TB 6Gb/s SATA drives for /home, dual GB eth, Ubuntu 14.04 Linux | around 90 Linux workstations in our main, 256, overflow, and robot labs (see Machine Specs Table for details). |
swarthmore cs student sysadmins...
If you see any errors, know anyone's current website address, or notice anyone left off this list, please let me (knerr) know!
- 1987 Scott Schwartz
- 1987 Peter Greenberg
- 1988 Eiji Hirai
- 1989 Dan Rice
- 1989 Hal Pomeranz
- 1990 Garth Snyder
- 1990 Jeremy Brest
- 1990 Rich Williamson
- 1990 Fred Horch
- 1991 Andrew Rieger
- 1992 AC Capehart
- 1992 Alex Rothenberg
- 1992 Greg Keim
- 1992 Cindy Bernstein
- 1992 Josh Smith
- 1993 Luke Hankins
- 1993 Andrew Merrill
- 1994 Guy Haskin
- 1994 Phil Brandenberger
- 1994 Marc Rieffel
- 1995 Margaret Patterson
- 1995 Geoffrey Noer
- 1995 Randolph Brown
- 1996 Adam Preset
- 1996 Matthew Reed
- 1997 Alexandre Vorobiev
- 1998 Melissa Binde
- 1998 Daniel Eisenbud
- 1999 Martine Claremont
- 1999 Cathryn Polinsky
- 1999 Matt Coddington
- 2000 Joshua Lewis
- 2001 Nik Johnson
- 2001 Talia Young
- 2002 Beth Tsai
- 2002 Gabriel Rosenkoetter
- 2003 Michael Sean Finney
- 2003 Aduke Thelwell
- 2004 Renuka Nayak
- 2004 Sorelle Friedler
- 2004 Elizabeth Holman
- 2005 Joshua Berney
- 2007 Sarah Owocki
- 2007 Drew Perkins
- 2008 Jeffrey Kaufman
- 2008 Mary Wootters
- 2009 Meggie Ladlow, Adam Yie
- 2011 Doug Woos
- 2012 Kristen Allen
- 2013 Steve Dini
- 2014 Chris Magnano
- 2015 Katherine Hamilton
- 2016 Riley Collins
- 2017 Jacob Carstenson
- 2018 Clare Hanlon
