[UFO Chicago] Announcing the Shachter Computer Labs

[Jay F Shachter]

Readers of this mailing list may have noticed Brian Sobolak's generous
offer to contribute a Dell CRT (with video cable) to the Shachter
Computer Labs.  Because generosity is contagious, and in keeping with
the philosophy of free operating systems, I hereby make the Shachter
Computer Labs available on demand to the entire membership of this
mailing list.

In the basement of my home I have a collection of spare computers and
computer hardware which I have been using for sundry research and
educational purposes.  There are four Intel-based computers plus two
older Sparc-based computers (a SparcStation 4 and a SparcStation 5),
three video monitors and two video monitor cables (with Brian's
contribution, these numbers will be four and three, respectively), one
router, and many cables, disks, and I/O cards, too numerous to count.
One of the Intel-based computers is running Microsoft Windows, while
the others are currently set up as multiboot machines on which I have
installed Fedora, Debian, SuSe, FreeBSD, Solaris 9, Solaris 10, and
Plan 9.

Any member of this mailing list who is currently between jobs or who
otherwise wants to acquire new skills or knowledge is welcome to come
to my basement and work with the available hardware.  If you need to
learn, for example, how to set up heterogeneous networks, with such
things as the automounter or LDAP or Kerberos working cross-platform,
you can use my equipment as your lab environment.  You may reinstall
the machines if you want to practice installation, and I have a CD
writer on which to create installation CDs if you can't find the ones
you want in my extensive collection.  If you want to practice your
hardware skills, I have, as mentioned above, numerous spare
components: disk drives, CD drives, zip drives, audio and video cards
(one of which can be used to control a conventional television
monitor), keyboards, weird pointer devices, plus a large collection of
screwdrivers, and you are welcome to take the computers apart and move
hardware components in and out of them.

The Shachter Computer Labs are open to the public six days a week
(closed between Friday night and Saturday night).  Call, or send
electronic mail, before coming, preferably several hours in advance,
so that someone will be home to let you in to the basement.


			Jay F. Shachter
			6424 N Whipple St
			Chicago IL  60645-4111
				(1-773)7613784
				jay at m5.chicago.il.us
				http://m5.chicago.il.us