Many design courses at Columbia (both digital systems design and circuit design) make extensive use of industrial CAD tools which run on the teaching lab computers on the 12th Floor of Mudd.

Read the following :

• 1. You may use the Sun workstations in the VLSI Lab in 1218 Mudd or the Linux workstations in the Embedded Systems Lab in Mudd 1235.   Your same home directory and login will be available in both environments.  Sun binaries for the CAD tools will be automatically invoked when you use the Suns while Linux binaries will be used when you run on the Linux machines.
• 2. You need
  • Swipe/badge access to both Mudd 1218 and Mudd 1235.
  • An active login ID
• 3. These will be created for you from a sign-up list which will be during the first day of class for courses that use the teaching lab facilities.  Any further issues about login access should be directed to Christian Gough (cgough@ee.columbia.edu).  Access issues should be addressed to John Kazana (kazana@ee.columbia.edu).
• 4. Once you have successfully logged in, there will be tutorials available later to guide you further through the CAD tools.

Guidelines for working in both the VLSI Lab (Mudd 1218) and the Embedded Systems Lab (Mudd 1235):  Both labs are managed by EE Department and they have some general guidelines which are to be followed strictly. Failure to comply by these rules generally results in permanent deletion of the account without much discussion. In all cases, it will be extremely difficult for the instructor or TA to restore the account.

• Do NOT bring any friends/visitors in the lab and let them use the machines on your account.
• The quota for each student is 80 MB. Therefore, it is important that you keep only relevant files in your home. In case, you genuinely need more space, consult the TA. .
• Do NOT fire huge printing jobs on the lab printers. Printers are for your convenience and printing anything other than HW or project files is NOT permitted. We have limited quota on the paper and we have to work within those limits. Also DO NOT try to print tool documentation. Such files are hundreds of pages.
• Do NOT reboot the machines. Several other people might have important jobs running on the same machine. Contact system adminitrators in case it hangs or freezes.
• System Administrator :
  • Christian Gough [cough@ee.columbia.edu]

Some Facts You need to know....

• There are two printers for you to use.  The printer in Mudd 1218 is called "vlsiprinter_1" and is the default printer for the Sun machines in Mudd 1218.  The printer in Mudd 1235 is ...
• To log on remotely, use following machine names.
  • aegina.cisl.columbia.edu (Sun machine, Mudd 1218)
  • syracuse.cisl.columbia.edu (Sun machine, Mudd 1218)
  • nemea.cisl.columbia.edu (Sun machine, Mudd 1218)
  • delphi.cisl.columbia..edu (Sun machine, Mudd 1218)
  • marathon.cisl.columbia.edu (Sun machine, Mudd 1218)
  • corinth.cisl.columbia.edu (Sun machine, Mudd 1218)
  • thebes.cisl.columbia.edu (Sun machine, Mudd 1218)
  • rhodes.cisl.columbia.edu (Sun machine, Mudd 1218)
  • byzantium.cisl.columbia.edu (Sun machine, Mudd 1218)
  • olympus.cisl.columbia.edu (Sun machine, Mudd 1218)
  • micro1-micro14.ilab.columbia.edu (Intel machines, Mudd 1235)

  Only ssh access to the machines is allowed (for security reasons).  Telnet and rlogin cannot be used.

• Your default shell is "ksh". If you "really" hate this shell and want to use some different shell, send an email to the System Administrator.  You will be responsible for porting the "ksh" tools environment to alternate shells.
• To remotely log in from a UNIX machine, use the following command:
  
  $ ssh -l user_name remote_machine_name
  prompted for password....type in
  
  Where "$" represents the command prompt and "mymachine" is the full name of the computer you are sitting on and "remote_machine_name" is any name from the list of names given above.
• To remotely log in from a Windows machine, you will need an ssh client.  The best choice here is the terminal emulator puTTY which is available for download from this site.  You will also need X11 client software.  Unfortunately, most of these are commercial packages; a good choice here is Exceed 9.0 from Hummingbird Ltd.  More details on remote X11 connections can be found on a page maintained by the Systems Administrator.
• All paths for CAD tools should be automatically set through a tools environment supported for the ksh environment. Please address questions on the CAD tool environment to your instructor or TA.

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