Eskinews... Maintenance outage saturday morning and probably wednesday evening.

[Robert Dinse <nanook@eskimo.com>]

     We are going to take news down for a little while saturday morning to
attempt to move it from a 4/670MP to an SS-20.

     Earlier attempts to move it to an SS-10 didn't work because SparcLinux
was extremely unstable on that platform.  We are going to try an SS-20 chassis
as it is the only other chassis that the combination of CPU's and periphery
that are presently in the 4/670MP can operate in.

     I wish to retire the 4/670MP because it consumes large quantities of
electricity (it has a 900 watt power supply), generates large quantities of
heat, and only has a 25mhz bus which may become problematic if we attempt to
put an ultra-wide controller in it.

     If the SS-20 proves also to be unstable, then we may try an Ultra-1.  If
both the SS-20 and the Ultra-1 are unstable, then we'll go back to the 4/670
until I can find something else to try.

     Then, again we are expecting to get the new spool drives next wednesday,
so there will be another outage while we take the machine down and connect
them.