Background Machines.

burnmoor a mailbox server. Users could choose to have their mailbox on this machine then using POP (Post Office Protocol) they could download new mail to their personal machine then delete the mail from the server. Alternatively using IMAP users could view an index of the mailbox and read/delete/save messages from any machine in the World and Space. But they had to operate within the constraints of the mail server.

cragdb Every user of the service had to have an entry in the central database DUND.
This ensured uniqueness of identification.

scawdell a print server. All print outputs were sent to scawdell
that queued them for one of 19 printers or plotters around the campus
that was closest to the requesting machine.

dns0 People like to use names, computers liked numbers. The Domain Name Server dns0 (along with dns1 and dns2, hosted on other machines) translated the requested Internet name to an Internet numerical address. eg doc.ic.ac.uk (document.imperialcollege.academic.united kingdom) mapped to 155.198.1.40 dns0.ncl.ac.uk was a source for dns lookups for ncl.ac.uk domain from anywhere on the Internet.

leaps1 & leaps2 where batch processing machines. Users of the UNIX service would normally work interactively, entering a command and getting a response within a second, but some commands would take hours or more to complete. Such commands could be entered as a batch job to a dnqs (Distributed Network Queueing System)

blenheim A development mailserver to take over from burnmoor.

wath Development print server.

cheviot The electronic mail sorting office.

Directs incoming mail to a user's mailbox.
Re-signs outgoing mail with the users email address.
So my email if sent from nreb@eata.ncl.ac.uk was re-signed r.e.broughton@ncl.ac.uk
and incoming mail to r.e.broughton@ncl.ac.uk was sent to nreb@burnmoor.ncl.ac.uk.

On the set of drawers next to cheviot is two boxes, an S-Telex Adapter and a Faxbox.
Users could send an email to a TELEX or fax machine.

nisp Was alias - mailbase.ncl.ac.uk UK mailbase service.
People of like interest can join a list and exchange information as a group by electronic
mail. This machine was replaced by -

norn The new mailbase machine
770 lists
70,000 subscriptions
133,000 messages/day
45,000 users

whitbeck a news server. (What news?)

crinkle A licence server.

ipgate A gateway between the X25 Pink Book Protocol and the IPv4 World.

whin CWIS/gopher, World Wide Web server.

bowder Boot server for the dialup communications server.

bowder also provides system configuration and logging support for the network routers.

styhead Personal workstation alias - ntp0.ja.net UK stratum 1 NTP time server. It has a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver connected. By exchanging messages with several other computers The NTP (Network Time Protocol) software can decide which computers have bad time and from the remaining select the best to synchronise its clock to.

styhead's GPS receiver was in a rack at the top of Claremont Tower that also housed bowder's MSF receiver. Going to FULLSIZE and using the scroll bars:- The black top box is a modem. Next is the RADIOCODE CLOCK MSF receiver. The bottom is a power supply on top of which is the GPS receiver.

On the roof above are the aerials for the receivers.
The white puck shaped one on the left is the GPS aerial.
The T shaped one on the right is the MSF aerial.
In between was a microwave dish that was part of the WAN.
Newcastle University was the JANET contact point for academic institutions in the North East.

beal a PC running MicroSoft system.

just retired timeserver created by Dick Snow and Harry Whitfield from Computing Science.
bowder has taken over its duty.

Originally it had a radio receiver connected getting the MSF time signal from Rugby.
It used the rdate protocol to respond to requests for time/date.
It was one of the earliest timeservers on the Internet.

hilldb A database server.

step A name server for the NRS (Name Registration Scheme) which is part
of the X25 protocol suite.

Network monitoring machine under evaluation.

A gaggle of black & white laser printers. At this time they were centrally located
the users had to come to ouput racks to get their printouts.
Later the printers were distributed to the cluster rooms.

A High Speed Line Printer this was used to produce draft quality prints. Before cheap laser printers output was from mainframe computers to high speed line printers. These were heavy/costly/noisy machines involving a bank of 132 hammers hitting paper on to an inked ribbon moving at 1000 lines per minute.

eller A network monitoring machine. Unfortunately the users telephoned the computer operators reporting a problem before this told us something was wrong.

An A3 size colour printer. This is the latest gee wizz thing.