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Split split split split personality workstations

LinuxWorld London’s Linux-based cyber-cafe will be done with two machines.

No, twelve.

Well... really two, but they’re acting as twelve using multiple screens, keyboards & mice.

This is something I’ve done a few times over the years, but I only ever got up to three screens on one machine. It’s nice to see it being done more effectively & in batches of six at a time.

The reduction in set-up effort allowed these people to get twelve screens happy from scratch in under 30 minutes. Individual machines would have taken roughly three hours to get going.

Comments

Leon RJ Brooks said…
Oh... those 3 cards were only possible because the machines had (wait for it) VL-BUSS video cards.

For those who don't remember VL-BUSS, it was a sort of super-stretched AT cardset, with some almost PCI-looking connectors stuck up the other end (inboard) of the card. It was common to get a machine with one VL-BUSS card containing video and one with disk controllers, serial, parallel, games etc. Often plus one spare slot.

The machines in question had 3 VL slots and on-board disk controllers, so I used one VL for each video card, serial (RS-232) ports for mice and and the keyboards through mouse ports (which are, after all, serial ports).
26 September, 2006 10:58
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