In the first phase of the Alexandria project, hardware for the rapid prototype will be assembled to provide a simulation model of the application system and user interfaces. The prototype will be localized to UCSB (the testbed system itself will be distributed.)
Data for the prototype will be gathered from low-cost, low-resolution scanners, and existing high-resolution datasets. The scanners will provide for simulation of the Ingest system, while the existing electronic datasets will provide realistic data for testing the data manipulation, storage, and display aspects of the system. The scanners will be driven by 486 PCs supplied by Digital.
The processing of the raw images into the stored form will be performed on a DEC 3000/300 workstation provided by Digital. This workstation will also be used as the principal software development machine for the prototype.
Browse-ready files will be stored on a DEC 3000/800. This system will also serve as the front-end to the end-user. This system will contain over 256MB of RAM, 50GB of disk, and 100GB of tertiary tape storage.
The workstations will be connected via Ethernet to the campus broadband backbone network and the Internet. Remote X-server access will be supported in addition to the high-end access via the DEC 3000/800 front-end.
The bulk of the prototype software will use ARCinfo and ARCview, contributed by ESRI. Additional software development on the prototype will be oriented towards supporting the simulation of the system interfaces.