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Decus conference, Dec 10-13

	The DECUS conference in San Diego last month was VERY well attended.
I heard that there were over 4000 people there.  It was not a technical
conference but it was quite informative. Since Professor Nettesheim was there
to cover the sessions on the PDP 11, I attended the sessions concerned with
the PDP 10-20 family of machines.

	There were many complaints being aired about DEC's service response
and quality of spares. This conference is apparently the forum for expressing
all frustrations with DEC publicly, it is also the forum for expressing to
DEC the needs of its user community, software, service, training, etc.

	New site preparation was particularly emphasized in several sessions
I attended.  The KL10 is very susceptible to ground currents. Installations
that had supported other DEC machines with no problems were plagued with
faults due to improper grounding when the KL10 was installed.  It was recommended
that new sites be prepared according to requirements set forth in the
%2DEC System 20 Site Preparation Guide%1(EK-DEC20-SP-00X) and the %2Digital Site
Preparation Guide%1(EK-CORP-SP-00X) at least six months prior to delivery date
of the machine and that a DEC representative check the environment with the
customer at that time so that any changes that may be required can be taken
care of well in advance of the arrival of the machine.

	The languages that are officially supported by DEC include:
Fortran, COBOL, Algol-60, APL, Basic, CPL, DBMS, MACRO/LINK, and SORT/MERGE.
Languages which are available (or are soon to be so) but are non-products
include: Ada, Pascal, BLISS, and Simula. There are several languages, software 
packages and documentation available from DEC users for the cost of tape 
and postage. I have a list of names, addresses, and what was presented as
being available at the conference, and of course there is also the Decus handbook.

	DEC provides several courses for training people in the use of their 
machines and software.  Regrettably most of these courses are offered on the
East Coast.  At the request of several conference attendees DEC representatives
agreed to attempt to set up a permanent West Coast training center.  They do
offer some courses on the West Coast now, but not on a regular basis.  They will
also offer a course on-site for anyone willing to pay for it; they figure
that the break-even point for such a course occurs with 4-5 students.  This
approach is feasible if several institutions join together in the course.

	The major benefit of the conference appears to be its ability to bring
together users of DEC machines for the purpose of sharing experiences,
software, bugs, fixes, and frustrations. It helps to know someone else
in your area with a similar machine setup, someone you can call when all
seems hopeless only to discover that the problem you're having was had
by them as well and has been solved.