Burnside High given a mainframe

Press, 27 July 1982, Page 25

Burnside High given a mainframe

Burnside High School has become the owner of a mainframe computer system: a gift from Lane Walker Rudkin of its ICL 1904 S system. Lane Walker Rudkin recently replaced the ICL equipment with a Wang system. The gift includes 256 K words of memory, three 60 megabyte disc drives, and a 1500 iines-per-minute printer. Mr Roy Jenkins, the executive officer at Burnside High, said that assistance with maintaining the hardware had been offered from another source. The school was hoping to get offers of assistance from the industry in other aspects, such as the provision of terminals. Burnside High School also has one TRSBO and four Apples. Another Apple has been ordered under the special Apple offer.

The school will try to use the 1904 S for student and administrative computing, according to Mr Brian Chatterton, a mathematics teacher at Burnside. “The project will definitely be carried out on a time available basis.” said Mr Chatterton. “We will be looking at it in November to see whether we can get it going within the limit of our resources,” he said. Maintenance and running costs will be the main worry for the new owner. The 1904 S was nearing the end of its economic life at Lane : Walker Rudkin. Mr Chatterton was careful i not to place too much hope • that the school could afford ; to run the mainframe, “We : are being realistic about it,” he said.