Newsgroups: ucb.net.announce, ba.internet, comp.mail.uucp
From: e...@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Eric Allman)
Date: 18 Aug 1994 23:11:19 GMT
Local: Thurs, Aug 18 1994 4:11 pm 
Subject: death of ucbvax

Venerable old ucbvax, once a cross-roads of the network, will be 
turned off for the last time on Friday, 19 August at 2:00pm PST 
(21:00 GMT).  Should you recall the glory days of ucbvax, you 
might allow for a minute of net-silence as we shut it down.  (If 
anyone happens to be in a position to monitor any backbones, 
please let me know if usage dips.)  There will be a small, private 
gathering as the circuit breaker is thrown. 

To add insult to injury, the hardware will be salvaged by the 
Police Department to run card-key systems -- after conversion 
to VMS.  Sigh. 

Ucbvax, formerly a major UUCP and news site, had fallen on hard 
times as the world moved past MicroVAXen.  In recent years, it 
had essentially no support, still running an out of date version 
of BSD on very slow and small disks.  It valiantly continued in 
its task even as the world moved on to SuperScalar RISCs.  The 
Computer Science Division finally moved into a new building, leaving 
ucbvax alone in a cold, dark machine room.  Ucbvax immediately 
developed disk hiccups in the swap area.  We are keeping it on 
life support until the ceremony. 

Please feel free to redistribute this message to anyone who might 
be interested. 

                                     UCBVAX 
                                      R.I.P. 
                                 August 19, 1994