STANFORD
MEDICAL

CENTER

 

Computing Newsletter

Published Irregularly by the ACME Staff

Vol.11, No. 6 February 13, 1973

 

 

CONTENTS

 

 

Item Page
1. New Medical Center Computing Facility... ccc ccc ccc ccc cece eee cesenenne 1
2. ACME Datafile Compression........... ee sees Cee mee eee erate eve rnasenece 1
3. Revised ACME Operator Schedule............ re rrr se eenee wee eeeeeae L
4, Comments from ACME USErS......cccccccccuceacetececcucvacucucces ceeaee 2
2+ SIGBIO Colloquium on Time-Oriented Medical Records..........e. ee 2
6. New Seminar Series.......ccceeeeeee ee semen see ee ese eseesteucs 2
T. Personnel Changes......cccscsscccnccsccvuvcvceveseceeresvesevecvececes 2
8. Changes in PUBLIC Program DATACOPY...........eceece sve veeeas see eeeeees 3
9. Use of LF or INDEX Key... sce ceccccec cece cc esstececccaccscevccacceees 3
10. New and Revised Linear Regression Programs on PUBLIC File............. 3
11. Long Print Job Problem.......cceeeees SC 3

12. New and Revised Notes Since Newsletter J-48 (Dec. 20, 1972)......0.05, 4
J-49
Page 1

1. New Medical Center Computing Facility:

 

On danuary 30, 1973, Dr. Clayton Rich, Vice-President for Medical Affairs,
decided to form a new computing facility to serve Stanford Medical Center.
The existing Hospital Data Processing and ACME facilities will be merged.
Current plans call for installation of an IBM 360/65 before mid-August 1973.

The services to be offered on the new facility will include interactive PL/ ACME
terminal support, batch services for data processing and research support, some
small machine communications, and the capacity to provide additional services to
the entire Medical Center community. Low data rate realtime data acquisition
services could be offered if sufficient demand were expressed by present or
future users; these services would probably be based on use of the IBM 1800
processor using the existing software,

The new facility will be located in the space now occupied by Hospital Data
Processing. Over the next several months, much work will be done to modify
the building and to provide the necessary communications, cabling, and mul-
tiplexing between the ACME Machine Room and the new machine room.

Many details remain to be worked out. These include organizational structure,
systems software implementation planning, further hardware planning, etc. Ad-
ditional details will be provided soon in a newsletter to be published by the
new facility.

R. Jamtgaard

2. ACME Datafile Compression:

 

A new option has been added to the ACME file system to compress data files.
Zeroes, undefined values, and repeated words are represented by 2 bits instead
of 32 bits. Savings of 500% have been achieved in some large files. See
ACME Note FILCMP.

F, Germano

>. Revised ACME Operator Schedule:

 

We plan to reduce the number of hours during which the ACME Machine Room will

be manned during the day in order to reduce our current operating costs and
provide additional funding to make the new facility possible. Terminal services
will continue to be available for the same amount of time as before. In the

past, the Machine Room has been manned 2 hours/day during the week plus 16 hours/
day on weekends. Effective March 1, 197%, operator coverage will be reduced on
swing shift. The swing operator will lock the Machine Room at 8 p.m. Listings
can be picked up after 4 a.m. the following morning. Swing shift users will be
plugged into the switchboard in S101 prior to the operator's departure.

C. Class
J-49
Page ¢

4. Comments from ACME Users:

 

Over the past month, many of the major ACME users have been interviewed by
staff members. The initial purpose of the interviews was to obtain infor-
mation which would prove helpful if ACME's users were to transfer to the
300/67 rather than to a new Medical Center computing facility. It was espe-
cially interesting to note the number of major users who regularly use programs
which have no documentation; nor do these users have programmers on their staffs
who fully understand the operation of the programs. Many users did not under-
stand the magnitude of effort involved in transferring from PL/ACME to other
languages and systems. Therefore, some seminars will be scheduled soon at which
recommended documentation levels and potential conversion problems can be
discussed. If users have funds available to pay for programming help to analyze
existing programs and document them, they can contact Frank Germano, Manager of
User Services, at ext. 5758. Those who reed such help should contact Frank in
the very near term; the number of programmers on ACME's staff will be reduced
over the next few months. These programmers have extensive PL/ACME experience
and can document your work faster than newlv trained personnel could do in the
future,

R. Jamtgaard

5. SIGBIO Colloquium on Time-Oriented Medical Records:

 

‘the Bay Area SICBIO chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
will have Dr. James Fries, Asst. Prof. of Medicine in the Immunology Division
at Stanford, as their speaker Wednesday, February 21, 1973, at 7:30 p.m. The
meeting will be held in Room 317 of the Health Sciences East Building at the
University of California at San Francisco. A no-host dinner will precede the
talk. Those interested in joining the group for dinner should call Dr. R.M.
Flashoff at 666-2974. We would like to see more participation by Stanford
medical faculty and staff in the SIGBIO activities.

R. Jamtgaard

6. New Seminar Series:

several users have expressed interest in continuing the Medical Computing
Seminar series, Ron Jamtgaard will be organizing a six- or eight-week series
to begin around March 1. Each meeting will be announced through the Medical
Center Daily Announcements bulletin and via ACME terminals. Suggestions for
speakers and topics are encouraged.

R. Jamtgaard

Y. Personnel Changes:

During January 1973, three personnel changes in the ACME staff were announced.
Chuck Granieri, a systems programmer, and Rich Cower, an operator, have trans-
ferred to the SLAC Computing Fa ility as of February 1. Jane Whitner, the
statistical programmer for ACM#, was the first of our programmers to be affected
by layoff notice, effective March 2, 1973. Given the impending termination of the
ACME grant and the fact that the new Medical “enter Facility will have fewer
people than the combined Hospital and ACME steffs, it is unfortunately necessary
that some of our experienced personnel be laiu off.

R. Jamtgaard
8. Changes in PUBLIC Program DATACOPY:

 

PUBLIC program DATACOPY has been modified to more efficiently reproduce data-
files with mixed length records. Also new options allow copying FROM and INTO
compressed data files, (Compression is explained in ACME Note FILCMP.) and
suppressing terminal output of copied record lengths. See ACME Note EDQ-2.

8. Weyl

9. Use of LF or INDEX Key:

 

The following change has been made for users' convenience when backspacing and
over-typing on terminals which have linefeed or index keys: the character pro-
duced by these keys is now ignored on input to the computer. This character
may be entered by typing $x . Note that a 2741 terminal can perform the
INDEX action on output even though it may not have an INDEX key on the keyboard.

B. Stainton

10. New and Revised Linear Regression Programs on PUBLIC File:

 

Newly revised versions of LINREG and LACKFIT are available on the PUBLIC file.
Also, there is a new PUBLIC external subprogram LACFTSUB which performs the
test for linearity of regression formerly done in LACKFIT. LACKFIT now prompts
for the necessary input and calls LACFTSUB to do the calculations.

The new version of LINREG now gives the coefficient of correlation between x
and y, a scatter plot, a significance test on the correlation coefficient, and
confidence intervals for slope and intercept as additional optional output, as
well as the previous output.

Both LINREG and LACKFIT can now accept input from files.
The revised version of LINREG is described in ACME Note BEBR-%. The new version
of LACKFIT is given in ACME Note EAM-5, and LACFTSUB is explained in ACME Note
ETLR-1L.

J. Whitner

ll. Long Print Job Problem:

 

More and more often, an ACME user will either submit extremely long files to be
printed or will submit up to 50 jobs to be printed at one time. Almost always,
these are submitted during the day and mist be printed during ACME's heaviest
usage. Such long listings print slowly during heavy load conditions, often
taking three or four hours to print. Please consider the impact this has on
turnaround time for shorter jobs submitted by other users.

The best way to alleviate this ; oblem is to print such files on weekends or
in the evening. On weekdays the jobs can be submitted at 43 p.m. or Later.
Call the ACME operator at ext. 590% and tell him that you have put a long job
in theprinter queue. He will defer the job fcr printing during the evering
J-49
Page 4

shift, and you will be able to pick it up the following morning. The large
number of ACME users with short print jobs will appreciate such consideration,

M. ProweLll

li. New and Revised Notes Since Newsletter J-48 (December 20, 1972):

 

NEW

ATYNET-1
FILCMP-1

GPROB-1
H30CH-1
PVMT-1L

TDOV-1
TDSUB-1

TODPDA-1
TODPDB-1
TODPDC -1
WNITE-1

YIBMTP-1
YLISP-1

YULOG-1

REVISED

AAS-38
APUB-11
AV-4
CAB-3
CT-20
DA-1O
EDQ-2

FX-5
HTAPE-2

KASCIT-2
KCT-4
KE-7
YCD-2

Tymshare Network Feasibility (B. Stainton) January 22, 1973.

ACME Datafile Compression - User Information (F. Germano )

February 12, 1973.

Statistics Problem Set for the Beginning PL/ACME Course (V. Wiederhold/
Dr. B. Brown) February 8, 1973.

Telephone Line Communication for Terminals at Speeds of up to 49 Char-
acters/Second (B. Stainton) January 29, 1973.

Remarks on Paging Reference Distribution (T. Rindfleisch/c. Wiederhold’
January 15, 1973.

TOD System Overview (F. Germano) February 13, 1973.

User-Supplied TOD Subprograms fs1 Data Checking and Coding (S. Weyl}
February 5, 1973.

Operational Overview for TOD Databank (F. Germano) February le, 1973.
TOD Scatterplot Program (F. Germano) February 12, 1973.

TOD Reviewdx Program (F. Germano) February 12, 1973.

Internal Documentation of Overnight TAPF and LISP Jobs (C. Granieri)
February 13, 1973.

Operator Procedure: User Disk/Tape Dump/Restore Procedure (F. Germano)
January 4, 1973.

Operator Procedure - Overnight LISP Jobs (C. Granieri/c. Class)
February 6, 1973.

Operator Instructions for Final Preparation of the UNILOG Report

(R. Cower) January 2, 1973.

ACME Notes Index (E. Baxter) January 18, 1973.

Papers Written by ACME Users (E. Baxter) January 10, 1973.

Visitor's Information Sheet (F. Germano) January 15, 1973.

User Hardware Installations - ACME Connected (C. Class) January |, 1973.
ACME Terminal Listing (C. Class) January 15, 1973.

ACME Device Addresses (J. Miller/C. Granieri) January 15, 1973.

ACME Program Library DATACOPY: Reproducing a Complete or Partial Data
File (G. Wiederhold/S. Weyl) February 8, 1973.

Current Implementation of the File System (R. Frey) February le, 1973.
Choice of Tape Units on 360/370 Equipment (IEM) (G. Wiederhold/

B. Stainton) January 5, 1973.

ACME Use of the ASCII Character Set (B. Stainton) January 29, 1973.
Terminal Conversion Tables (B. Stainton) January 9, 1973.

EBDIC Codes for a Fl” Character Set (G. Wiederhold) January Le, 1974,
Clip Deck (Change a Vo.ume Label) (C. Class) January 44, 1973.