A bit of Cornell history is fading away as Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) prepares to shut down CornellC, the last of the university's mainframes. It will be turned off sometime between January and June 2012. CIT is asking remaining and past users -- there are about 1,100 accounts -- to retrieve stored data before the system permanently shuts down.

"It's the end of an era," said Chris Brown, CIT technical area manager who oversees what's left of CornellC. "New systems have more flexibility and power, but many of us [programmers] remember the days when everything was on the same machine."

In the early 1980s three mainframes, dubbed CornellA, CornellB and CornellC, handled most of the university's business. Users connected from terminals that were little more than screens showing what was happening on the faraway machine. CornellA kept student records; CornellB handled other administrative computing; CornellC began as an administrative tool, but eventually some of its power was made available for scientific research. Many students and faculty members had their first email accounts on CornellA, talking to each other and people at other universities. Communication was over the Bitnet network that preceded the Internet, and later via the Internet.

"Cornell mainframes were on the Internet before people knew what the Internet was," Brown recalled.

In the 1980s, CornellC hosted the first CUINFO guide to Cornell information. In the early 1990s it provided services via Bear Access, the university's menu-driven gateway to services for students, faculty and staff.

CornellB was short-lived, shutting down in 1983. CornellA was retired in 1994. Administrative functions have moved off of CornellC to PeopleSoft and the Kuali Financial System, leaving only some archival human resources records and the Academic Personnel Database of faculty information, which will be moved to a new system called WorkDay.

Like The Doctor on "Dr. Who," CornellC has lived in many bodies, starting as an IBM 370/168 and being upgraded every few years to a newer model. Currently it is an IBM z9 BC G01. That machine still has some value and will probably be sold, Brown said.

CornellC users who need more information should contact CIT Mainframe Support at mainframe-support@cornell.edu.