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Undergraduate Lab


Lab location

The undergraduate computing lab for the CS Department is located at 730 Commonwealth Avenue on the third floor in room 302. The building is located at the intersections of Commonwealth Avenue and Saint Mary's Street. Radio Shack and CVS occupy the first floor, and the building is commonly referred to as the "Radio Shack building" (it's the location of the first Radio Shack store). BU refers to this building as the Engineering Annex (EMA).

There are three entrances to the building. The first entrance is located next to the Espresso Royale Cafe. The second entrance is located on Saint Mary's Street where the Radio Shack store ends. The third entrance is located on the second floor garage. Elevator access is only available through the entrance next to Espresso Royale.


Lab resources

The undergraduate lab is comprised of 80 Dell OptiPlexs and 10 Sun Ultra 10 workstations. The Dell OptiPlexs are configured to boot into BU Linux, Windows 2000 Professional, and/or Windows XP Professional. The Sun workstations are installed with the Solaris operating system.

Also available to students is csa.bu.edu. csa.bu.edu is a Sun Ultra Enterprise 450 with four CPUs running the Solaris operating system. It is also available for remote logins.

 
Hours of operation

During the fall and spring semesters, the undergraduate lab is open during the following hours:

  • Monday - Thursday: 8AM - midnight
  • Friday: 8AM - 6PM
  • Saturday: 10AM - 8PM
  • Sunday: 10AM - midnight

During the summer term, the lab is open the following hours:

  • Monday - Thursday: 9AM - 8PM
  • Friday - Sunday: 10AM - 6PM

The lab is closed during all BU scheduled holidays and snow emergencies. The lab is also closed when classes are not in session.

 
Getting a CS account

CS accounts are available to all students who are taking CS classes through the College of Arts and Sciences, and students majoring or minoring in computer science. In order to get a CS account you will need to go to the CS lab at 730 Commonwealth Avenue. You will need to bring a photo ID with you.

There are currently two different CS accounts students can get (in the near future, this will be reduced to one single account). The first account is a Unix account. This account allows the user access to the Unix based machines in the CS Cluster. The other is a Windows account, and gives users access to the Microsoft Windows based computers.

Instructions are available at the Terminal Assistant (TA) desk in the front of the lab.

Since the Unix accounts are created in batches it may take up to an hour to have a Unix account created. Once the Unix account is created, the user can then create their Windows account.

 
Tutoring

The CS department provides tutoring for students needing additional assistance. Below is a schedule of tutoring hours: