Date   : Thu, 22 Feb 1990 08:24:00 MST
From   : "Frank J. Wancho" <WANCHO@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL>
Subject: Curiosity...

      I'm curious about Simtel20...  Where is it, how did it get
    started, what type of system, os, etc???  Electronic addresses
    don't lend themselves to maps. (That's why my disclamier is what
    it is.)

Here is the short answer.  If there's enough interest, I'll post a
much longer version which explains the complete history.

SIMTEL20 is located at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, about
40 miles north of El Paso, Texas.  It was originally procured to do
Scientific and Engineering work with access to net resources for the
Hybrid Computer Facility in the Simulation and Teleprocessing Branch.
The SIMTEL20 name is a contraction of that branch name and the fact
that it is a DECSYSTEM-20 running the TOPS-20 operating system.

It was installed seven years ago, in February, 1983, and was finally
connected to the net in August 1983.  When the Macsyma Consortium was
dissolved in September 1983, SIMTEL20 inherited the CP/M collection we
started on the MIT-MC host in 1979.  To that has since been added
several large collections, including the canned SIG/M, CP/MUG, and
PC/Blue collections as well as our own MSDOS, Ada, Unix/C, and
Macintosh collections, plus the mail archives for 22 mailing lists.

The primary purpose of SIMTEL20 is to provide network mailbox service
to scattered users in DoD, Federal agencies, and their contractors for
an annual flat fee.  For those users, we provide a stop-gap service
until they obtain their own local network host.

Until about a year and a half ago, those fees were the primary source
of income which made SIMTEL20 self-sustaining, including the
maintenance of the collections.  Except for the funding of a disk
drive to hold the Unix/C collection from another Army agency, LSSA, in
1985, and the partial funding of the Ada collection maintenance in the
past by the STARS Project office, the collections are unfunded.  The
maintenance of the collections is operated under one of the charters
of the DARCOM Microcomputer Software Sharing System proposed in 1982
and initially funded by several DARCOM (now AMC, Army Materiel
Command) organizations.  We are seeking other sources of funding to
keep this operation alive.

--Frank