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Greetings,
Let see here..
started with DOS 1.1,
then DOS 5.0
Win 3.1
OS/2
Win NT
Win 2K
Red Hat 7.0
Win XP
Linux Mint
Win 7
Win 10...
Managed to skip Win ME And and Vista and Windows 8!!
Running Win 10 now on laptop (CPU is not approved for Win 11) and Desktop (Just not approved CPU and BIOS).. have 2 VM's on the desktop .. one is Linux Mint and the other is Win 98 (for a game)
Going to wait until I have to replace a PC before making a jump into Win 11....also give everyone else a chance to work out the bugs for me ...
Cegarman
document code? If it's not intuitive, you're in the wrong field
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I was lucky enough to have a few years in the VGA era. 9 vga ports, 18 P/S2 ports, and 8 servers in the same rack are at your fingertips. You plugged it in and it just worked. The worst thing you could get was a slightly blurry screen if a cable was bent or too long. Switching was a painless double-scroll-lock and then a number key. Everything was great.
Then hdmi and display port took over. KVMs got very expensive and very non-functional. I went through 4 KVMs last year totaling about $1k and all have different fundamental flaws. One would freak out, lock up and emit an ear-piercing tone if you ever hit F1 until you rebooted it (nice of them to put a power switch on the front at least). Two would randomly black out or otherwise garble the monitor output when switching ports. My current one (display port) tells the computer that it's connected to that the monitor has been disconnected when switching, so all the windows get repositioned automatically. Tech support blamed the display port standard ("edid") saying it was working as intended, and my company resolved to buy me a third-party window management tool that theoretically repositions my windows to pre-defined locations when the monitor reappears (which only works about 80% of the time). Still, the screen flickers black for about 50 seconds every time I switch.
Where I used to flip to one box for something as trivial as to check the progress of a hour-long restore or whatever or even to check the time on the server that is set to my timezone, I now find myself rearranging my schedule to switch inputs less often and even ssh'ing and rdp'ing between severs because it's faster. I catch myself wishing I had the desk space and capital for a dedicated monitor and keyboard for each box.
/rant
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I've been using this for almost 3 years with no complaints. Only caveat is I'm using it with an older non-4k monitor; but the price difference vs 1920x1200 models wasn't enough to give up being more future proof.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CPLB6Y1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Edit: I'm also only using it for single screen systems, so am unsure if it has one of your issues or not.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
modified 6-Jan-22 14:31pm.
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Yeah unfortunately I'm using two monitors, and that brand does not seem to have a dual-head 4-way model. Appreciate the thought though.
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Ok, I didn't realize you were trying to switch both screens. Years earlier I did have a VGA KVM setup that swapped 1 screen off my main system to a secondary one. For progress/status checks - all I ever really needed box 2 to do - it was good enough.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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Memtha wrote: ssh'ing and rdp'ing between severs because it's faster
I was going to suggest that. I've never had a KVM switch that worked all that great even in the VGA days, and knowing how finicky DP/HDMI are, I don't have much faith in KVM switches that support them.
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I still have my Belkin vga. If I wasn't so hopelessly spoiled by 4K I would seriously be buying hdmi->vga and vga-> hdmi adapters to use it again.
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I gave up on KVM for video years ago, but still use KVM for keyboard and mouse. For video I just change the input on the monitor. Which is OK with only two systems (3 monitors) and I would say I generally have to hit the reset button on the KVM about once every couple of months, if that.
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Tempting. Years ago, before I decided to "invest" in a "real" kvm, I had a usb hub plugged into a clicky switch thing designed to share a usb printer between computers, and 3 3-way hdmi multiplexers designed for entertainment centers. Arguably that worked better, but I found it annoying to have to hit 3-4 buttons to switch. But it is very tempting to go back.
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I would get annoyed if the kvm switched all my monitors now, as I frequently have them displaying from two machines, but sometimes go with all three displaying from one. Worst part is if monitors have different ways to change inputs! So I usually buy three of the exact same thing.
A good kvm would deal with all of this but the prices of a good kvm, and the issues of them not working well, has me sticking to my current setup. Until the kvm goes bad (which I dread) I will probably stick to this. I wish I could run 3 machines through a good kvm but I have room to spare so other machines get their own displays and input devices.
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So I usually buy three of the exact same thing.
Same. Black Friday about every five years. Though this time around I am annoyed at a visible contrast difference. Though that's a whole different rant.
Honestly the main reason I don't just go back to input switching is fear of wearing out the little buttons on my monitors.
As far as the kvm going bad, I'm more afraid of the ports it has being outmoded. Again. And what the state of whatever replaces hdmi/dp will be. Already there are talks of thunderbolt/usb-c being used for monitors (already a thing on apple), so I'm afraid to think about a usb-c only kvm that handles multiple monitors and input on a single cable; and what additional compromises they will have to make to do that.
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I hate this. Whether or not I start work right away, I really don't like waking up to a code mess - a project that doesn't build or that I'm in the middle of debugging, etc.
I do everything I can to avoid it, but sometimes it happens anyway. Right now I'm facing some indomitable bugs on multiple fronts, multiple projects. In fact, I don't even have a path forward I can make progress on, but for fixing those bugs.
And they are confusing. I've been attacking each of them for days, in the past. I put them down and stepped away for quite awhile too.
That's a tough spot to be in.
But the worst part of all of it is waking up to it. Every day that I do that, I have to be very careful to keep my mood up and not spoil my morning and thus my day, because if I'm not I'll think about it and fret over it even if I'm not actively working on it. The only real out is some sort of mentally immersive activity or meditation that allows me to lose it, but that relief is more temporary than the bugs, so I just try to keep myself occupied until the worst of it passes.
Meh.
I'm guessing I'm not the only one who has run into this. I get the feeling nobody likes broken builds and hanging debugging sessions - especially say, coming into them on a Monday morning (for those of you that do the M-F thing)
Real programmers use butterflies
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I haven't woken up to broken builds but have definitely woken up to debugging sessions for days on end.
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To be honest, I haven't woken up to a broken build in quite awhile, but it has happened when I was in the middle of porting a project.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I see you have your Windows updates turned off. I've had numerous times where Windows has finally decided to reboot my machine to install "critical" updates. There went a 3 week soak session trying to catch a bug. I'm trying to be more generous this year to the clowns, but I swear, whoever made that decision to force reboots needs to meet my 2x4 multiple times.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Wow. It's been a long time since I worked on software for which 3-week soak sessions were a thing.
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Some of the systems I work on only turn off once a year. Things like memory fragmentation become very important. It can be a real challenge to track down some customer issues.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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I used to work on systems like that (telecom call servers). What kind of system are you working on?
I still find it amusing when systems are shut down every week or two for "routine maintenance".
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Production machines for packaging. Imagine a 200 foot long machine packaging beer or diapers.... you name it. If our product stops running, the entire line goes down. The cost of our machine is insignificant to the cost of the line or the downtime.
So, yeah, like telecom switches and the like.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Interesting. I'd have guessed that the line would be regularly shut down for hardware maintenance, which would reduce the uptime expectations on you. Then again, your software wouldn't want to be the cause of a shutdown.
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Most of the time there is an annual shutdown. In our case, our equipment tends to be wired into the production line, so it's a REALLY big deal to tell the user to cycle power. Many times, our equipment is parked under the line in protected areas. The only way to cycle power is to do it for the entire production line, and there tends to be a LOT of systems connected to that line. Note that if our system isn't working, they aren't making product, I guess that qualifies as mission critical in a light sense of the word.
So, over the years I've learned not to code things in ways we take for granted. For example, malloc's are evil. Skipping the memory leak issue (We'll assume there is a matching free everywhere), this can easily lead to memory fragmentation and a hang down the road. I didn't believe it at first. I'm a believer now.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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At least it is a "mess" of your own making, one that is probably clean and clear to work with. Right now I am getting ready to deal with cleaning up / fixing a Big Ball of Mud created by another developer. It is definitely a high caffeine morning....
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When it's of your own making, you only have yourself to blame! But cleaning up someone else's Big Ball of Mud was always something that I found delightful.
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Not when that other developer is the "senior" developer still working on that project and is resisting any cleanup (and contributing more to it).
I actually enjoy doing this type of cleanup too, generally. Gives me a chance to stretch my software design muscles to see how best to approach this.
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