Paul Russell wrote:
> I did not think I had anything to contribute to this "back in the old
> days"
> thread, but the inclusion of IRISHVM in Nathan's list of the first 25
> licenses
> prompted me to review Notre Dame's history with LISTSERV.
>
> IRISHVM (LISTSERV license #011) was a VM system which was, I believe,
> operated
> by our College of Engineering. I do not know when the plug was pulled
> on that
> system, but I am fairly certain that it was no longer in existence
> when I came
> to Notre Dame in the spring of 1996.
In the interests of posterity ... :-)
Like Paul, I also don't know when it was decommissioned, but in 1986
IrishVM was an IBM 4381 used for research by former Professor David L
Cohn and his graduate students in the (then) Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering (ECE) in Notre Dame's College of Engineering.
Dr Cohn's grad students stumbled across LISTSERV very shortly after Eric
released it in the summer of 1986 (hence license #011).
That summer the University Libraries at Notre Dame were just embarking
on automation of their card catalog and creation of their first
generation online catalog. The most significant byproduct of the
infrastructure installation was first-ever networking of the Libraries,
and general access to electronic mail for library faculty and staff
members. The (then) Director of Libraries, Robert Miller, was deeply
committed to the integration of useful technology to further the work of
the Libraries, and had a strong working relationship with successive
directors of computing (Jim Wruck and Don Spicer, in particular). When
Mr Miller saw LISTSERV demonstrated for the first time, he immediately
understood its potential for both internal communication within the
Libraries, and electronic outreach to the Libraries' student, faculty
and staff patrons. He immediately telephoned Dr Spicer, who initiated
arrangements for LISTSERV to be installed on the University's central
mainframe, IrishVMA.
Given that this all happened fairly quickly (in institutional terms, at
least), it is a testament to the wildfire speed of positive word of
mouth regarding LISTSERV, that 218 other sites snuck into the license
queue between Notre Dame's Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering (ECE) and its Office of Information Technologies (OIT) in
the summer / autumn of 1986.
> By that time, LISTSERV (license #230) was
> running on IRISHVMA, a VM system operated by the Office of Information
> Technologies. I inherited LISTSERV on IRISHVMA in the summer of 1996 and
> migrated LISTSERV from VM to Solaris in the spring of 1998. For a
> while, our
> Alumni Association ran a seperately licensed instance of LISTSERV on
> their own
> server, however, their lists have been hosted on listserv.nd.edu since
> the
> spring of 2002. If I have counted correctly, we have been through at
> least four
> licenses, although I do not know whether we have been running LISTSERV
> continuously since we received license #011.
There were at least a couple of years of overlap, during which ECE was
running license #011 and OIT was running #230.
Incidentally, very shortly after LISTSERV was demo'd to Notre Dame's
Director of Libraries, it was similarly demo'd to the Director of
Academic Computing at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
(IUPUI). IUPUI acted a bit more quickly that Notre Dame's OIT, and
ended up with license #165 for IndyCMS (Nathan Brindle's alma mater),
right behind their colleagues at Indiana University Bloomington, with
license #164 for IUBVM.
John
--
John Harlan
Vice President, Computer Services
[log in to unmask]
L-Soft international Inc.
www.lsoft.com
LISTSERV (R) is a registered trademark of L-Soft.
There is only one LISTSERV® -- the product that launched the email list communication
industry in 1986. To discover the story behind LISTSERV, visit:
http://www.lsoft.com/corporate/20anniversary.asp
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