Hey, thanks everyone for your contributions. Much appreciated.
On 29/08/12 23:01, t...@prismnet.com wrote:
The Atto cards are great...If you want a single ported card,
> consider the Adaptec PowerDomain
I will look into the Atto cards more, as they seem to be well regarded
(and cheap now, when available).
I think single port SCSI would work best for me. My Scope cards are the
heavy lifters of my DSP farm. They are also linked (like SLI for GFX). I
think they are best kept in the mobo slots, with their own interrupt
channels (did I understand that correctly?). I plan to house the OASYS +
SCSI card in the expansion chassis. The SCSI card will not likely be
used much at the same time as the OASYS, so a shared interrupt shouldn't
affect things. I guess Adaptec is probably fine for this too.
On 29/08/12 23:11, t...@prismnet.com wrote:>
> So, unless you could live with all those limitations, I think the MDD
> has the most available PCI slots you can get.
Cool, thanks for that info and analysis. I definitely will stick with
the MDD for this. I think it's a fair fit for purpose.
On 29/08/12 23:36, Bruce Ryan wrote:>
> Just thinking about your ‘cable soup’ and the number of monitors you
have running - hot, easy to trip over and large electricity bill.
>
> Might it be worth running some form of VNC on your macs. (VNC,
rebadged as ‘screen-sharing’ has been part of Mac OS since 10·3, IIRC.)
> - For OS9 macs, there’s ‘OS9vnc Server PPC’. I’m using it to observe
and control my Pismo from my mac Pro just now.
> - For logging into and attempting to help with my parents’ PCs, I’ve
used TightVNC and ChickenOfTheVNC, IIRC. (Bit slow over the interweb but
OK over LAN.)
>
> (Before using screen-sharing so much, I used to use a 4-port KVM
switch to swap my monitor between Pismo, XServe, main mac and
work-provided mac but cables took over my desk and shelves, then
eventually the KVM unit became flaky.)
>
> I guess VNC might slow your pooters slightly but it might be better
than tripping over a cable and dragging loads of kit onto the deck with you.
Thanks for pointing that out. The cables are generally OK. Mostly behind
the desk. I invest a fair bit of effort into cable management when I set
up my work space.
I also like to have a dedicated monitor for each machine. I mostly work
'live' (lots of low latency concurrent processing). I like to see what
is happening on all my machines without having to switch around. I have
also used Synergy before (nice idea), but I also use OS9 and DOS, so no
play there. I used to use a KVM. Generally found them to be either cheap
rubbish, or rather expensive. I even tried a DOS graphical remote
desktop application for integrating one old machine, which was cool, but
stupidly slow.
Can VNC be used for keyboard/mouse only, without the video? I'm doing
some reading on this now. There has been interest in this from others
online, but I haven't filtered through all the info yet. PC2VNC will do
this, but Windows only. Sill reading ...
What I really want to do in this regard, is just share my USB keyboard
and mouse between all my machines.
I tried a couple of solutions to this already, but didn't really work out.
I tried a cheap port KVM. Didn't work at all. Horrible device. I have
another old 2 port PS/2 KVM, which is also quite bad. I have used pro
KVMs in server racks before, and had no issues. These are not so cheap
though. Not sure if they do true keyboard emulation in the disconnected
state though. At least on Windows, keyboard interface is stateful (I
think this is normal for most machines). To operate correctly, a switch
should remember the state, and re-establish this when re connecting. I
had trouble finding something with support for OS9, and modern machines,
and trouble finding anything decent which is also affordable.
I bought a mechanical USB switch, attached a small hub, and switched the
keyboard and mouse between the machines. I hoped that USB hot plugging
could take care of device recognition in a fast enough and reliable
fashion. It didn't work out. On my faster PC, it was fine iirc. My cheap
laptop with slightly dodgy USB ports would mostly work. Don't think I
got around to trying with DOS. The MDD was a problem. It often didn't
work, and sometimes would see keyboard or mouse, not both. One time the
MDD was sleeping (I think). I switched to it, and it made and
unrecoverable crash. Had to reinstall OS. Not sure what happened. I
vaguely recall some issues with sleep on older Macs, but not clear on
this at all.
I am considering trying two separate mechanical USB switches, with
separate keyboard and mouse, hoping that removing the hub might simplify
matters enough to allow things to operate sufficiently. Bit of wishful
thinking though. Still looking at older pro KVMs too, with a plan to
just leave the video disconnected (not all will work correctly this way
though). I'm using all VGA monitors ATM, so that should simplify
hardware requirements a little for the time being.
As an engineer, I probably could design a hardware/firmware solution for
this, but I can't see myself having time.
I really don't have room more for than one keyboard + mouse on my desk
though.
By the way, does anyone know if a Bluetooth keyboard + mouse with
software switch could be a solution?
On 30/08/12 05:00, Geke wrote:
> What about saving over the Ethernet/LAN?
I take it you mean using Ethernet instead of SCSI? The purpose of using
SCSI is to interface with some rather old musical instruments (80's to
90's) which happen to feature SCSI ports for both storage, and remote
control. Ethernet would be a truly lovely option to have, but sadly not
available for this old gear.
Sorry it's a rather long post. I wasn't going to bring some of these
issues up until a later date/another thread.
Thanks again,
Oli
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