Edited 20 April 90:  Specific Dates added 

Well, the time has finally arrived to shut down the ITS machines for the
last time.  The hardware is getting old, and the amount of maintenance
required to keep things running is getting out of hand.  We've been losing
ground at an accelerating rate for the last year.

The current plan is to turn AI and MC off for good at 5PM on Friday May 25.
We plan to take a snapshot of AI and MC's filesystem before the final
shutdown and to keep this snapshot available on some other file server for
a couple of months.  People who have a large number of files to evacuate,
but who lack efficient network access to AI and MC, are encouraged to
simply wait until after this snapshot becomes available.

AI's second RP06 (SECOND:) will be fixed soon to make it easier for people
to evacuate themselves.

Files on ITS backup tapes will be unavailable until someone writes the
program to read them.  Before the shutdown, modest file retrieval requests
(mail to FILE-R@AI) will be considered.  Extensive or complicated retrieval
requests will have to wait until after the dust settles after the shutdown.
Our judgment on these matters will be final.  Sorry.

All mailing lists will have to be moved elsewhere.  AI and MC will lose
their names to other hosts on May 15, so incoming mail will effectively
stop working on that date.

If you maintain a mailing list on AI or MC, you can save us some trouble by
moving your mailing list yourself as soon as possible.  We'll try and do
something responsible about those important lists that don't have obvious
owners, but don't count on us to save your mailing list for you -- we might
decide to just let it perish.

Please try not to pester us about the personal inconvenience this causes
you.  We don't have any suggestions about where you should read your mail
now, where you can keep your files, or where you can move your mailing
list, and we wish we knew of another PDP-10 that you could use.  (If you
-must- pester someone, send mail to DOOMSDAY@AI.)  We do appreciate your
loyalty to ITS during its lifetime at MIT.  Stop by sometime and we can
talk about the good old days when dinosaurs ruled the machine room.

As we continue to plan for doomsday, this file will be updated with the
latest news.

				- Alan