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There is a wide variety of computer and AV equipment available for use in the lab and for checkout.
Please note that only students, faculty and staff of the School of Information and Library Science may check out equipment from the SILS ITS lab.
In the Lab
Available for checkout (other pages)
Computer classroom PCs
The computer classroom at SILS offers 32 Dell Optiplex GX270 series computers, each with a 3.0GHz Pentium(R) 4 processor running Windows XP. Each computer has 1 Gig RD RAM, an 80 Gig NTFS hard drive, and DVD+RW drive, and a 17" flat Dell panel Ultrasharp 1505FP LCD monitor with side USB ports and a maximum resolution of 1280 X 768 pixels. There are 15 HP ScanJet 8200 USB Scanners, all with OmniPage Pro 12 installed. There are also 10 Quickcam Pro 3000 cameras for video conferencing and local video capture.
Computer projection is provided by a ceiling mounted Proxima Pro AV projector and a video switching system that allows the instructor's PC to be displayed directly on each of the 32 student monitors. Other features of the classroom include an indirect lighting system, a sound system, and a supplemental air conditioning system.
The classrooms at SILS are each equipped with a Dell Optiplex 280 or Alienware DH2 computer with a DVD player and VCR. Both devices are attached to a Eiki 4500 Lumen projector. The classroom computers contain the same software packages that the computing labs contain. Laptop computers can also be projected through the multimedia projectors.
Outer Lab PCs
The general use area of the lab includes eight computers of the same specifications as the computer classroom, four dual-core iMacs, one Optiplex GX1, and a Mac Mini. The GX1 and Mini are set up as DVD+RW and video capture station, which utilizes the capture card to capture digital and analog video. Premiere Pro 2.0 and AVID software are configured on this machine to enhance the transition between the different media formats. It is connected to an S-VHS VCR to facilitate video capture and editing. Additionally, located in this area is a Mac G5 and Pioneer DVD Recorder. Please see video capture FAQ for more information: http://sils.unc.edu/itrc/its/faq.php?id=4632
A networked HP 4200 LaserJet printer is available in the general use area as well as a networked HP 2500 postscript color ink-jet printer.
File Servers
SILS MS Windows services are divided among several Windows 2003 servers. Rackmounted 2650's and 2850's and Dell servers provide services for logons, ftp, and printing. Domain servers are 2550's and 2650's. Also supporting the lab is a Network Appliance Filer with 500 Gig NAS server. Blue Dragon is installed on a development server (takahe.ils.unc.edu) for students learning web-based databases within a Windows environment.
Network
All desktop computers in the lab and the school itself are connected to a departmental switched Gig ethernet network. Every machine on the network minimally has its own dedicated full-duplex 1000Mb port, while all file servers in the school have dedicated 1000Mb ethernet connections. All classrooms and public areas in and around Manning Hall are wireless ready with the 802.11abg standard. Areas included are: Library and main computing labs, rooms 208, 209, 216, 303, 304, and 307. In addition, the public areas of the building such as the foyer, front steps of Manning, the Lenoir side of Manning are also covered with wireless connectivity. The school's network is connected to the UNC campus fiber network over a 1000Mb/sec full-duplex gigabit ethernet connection and then to the Internet via a 2.4 Gb/sec ATM connection. The university is already part of the Internet2 project and the North Carolina Networking Initiative, and currently has in place a second OC-12/622 Mb/sec ATM connection to Internet2.
Unix Platform
In addition to the desktop PCs, several Unix platform machines are available. The primary Unix machine in the school is Ruby, a Dell 2650 with Redhat AS, 4GB of RAM, and 180GB of disk space. Ruby is available exclusively to faculty and to students enrolled in the school and is our general purpose Unix machine for student use.
In addition to Ruby, the school maintains several other Unix boxes. Enterprise 250 and 450 Servers act as network backup servers attached to an L1000 Tape Library System. Two Sun 280R Sun Fire servers provide for faculty and student research, each equipped with 4GB of memory and dual 770 Sparc III processors. Attached to these machines are around 600 Gig of data storage. One machine serves as an Oracle and MySQL database server and the second machine is for student and faculty research. There are several Linux servers using Advanced Server for infrastructure and Research and Development projects for various purposes.
Audio-Visual Equipment
SILS students may also borrow from the ITRC (lab and library) multimedia equipment which includes three digital cameras (two Sony Mavicas and a Sony DSC-F717), two video cameras (Sony TRV27 DV format video camera, and a Sony Hi-8 camcorder), a digital video recorder (Canon GL2), and two digital voice recorders. The computer lab also has four laptop computers and a cassette transcribing machine available for checkout.