in search of The Perfect Cable

About 5pm yesterday, I decided It Was Time to do something with the poor PC that's been rotting in the next room, for the better part of 4 years. I didn't remember much about the configuration, and was amused to find a (whoosh!) 200 MHz AMD K6, with a whopping 128 MB of core RAM. From the look of the logfiles, it was last turned on in 2001, so at least all the Y2K patches are there.

Turns out I left it as a dual-boot machine, running Red Hat Linux in one partition, and Win98 in another. It was setup to use a (gasp!) dialup connection - remember 56 Kb modems? I remembered that Win98SE had a TCP/IP stack, so I thought I'd wing it and see if I could get it to talk to my DSL circuit via Ethernet. Turns out it was just like riding a bicycle : there are a few times when I fell off and scraped my knees, but it didn't take all night to get this ancient warhorse online.

The biggest pain was the sheer number of times (maybe 40?) that Win98 had to reboot, once it found the broadband connection and proceeded to insist on adding four years worth of Critical Patches. I suspect it was a bit confused to see such a pterodactyl online, but eventually it stabilized, and now it sits 2 metres away, connected to the same KVM Switch that my primary box runs.

"What's that?", you say .. "I didn't know you had a KVM Switch!" What's he doing with quasi-modern technology? Well, you see .. that's when the bee entered my bonnet last night.

I nosed around the web, looking for a KVM switch that would allow me to use one keyboard, mouse and monitor on both a new USB system, and my ancient relic which had (gasp!) RS232C serial ports and a DIN-5 keyboard connector (big enough to steer). I settled on Belkin's OmniView SOHO line, one of which sits atop my desk, oozing an amber speck letting me know which of two boxes is on at a time (as if I couldn't tell the difference between Win98 and WinXP, or Linux running GNOME).

To be honest, I stopped at MicroCenter first (preferring to do business with them) but I left after seeing that they wanted $150 for the Switch, and Fry's was willing to be rid of theirs for $90 ... I figured it was worth the 6 mile drive to save $60.

Naturally (after returned home), I decided to simplify things. Naturally, that meant that none of the hundred of thousands of cables in Fibber's closet would work, so .. it was off to Fry's in search of The Perfect Cable, which was a hybrid of USB A:B, VGA M:F and mic/speaker. I was amazed to find what I wanted, and was pleased not to catch a load of grief over my desire to return what I'd bought the night before (PS/2 cables).

Yes, there were hiccups. The keyboard suddenly disappeared after I thought everything was working (turns out the cable became unplugged when I replaced the removable shroud on the Switch. Then, the old PC doesn't support USB in the BIOS, so booting it requires an old keyboard (so that I can opt for Win98 or Linux at the lilo boot prompt (LILO being a a lovely old accounting term). Give me a few months (and a paycheck) and I'll upgrade the motherboard to 21st Century technology. Heck, it'll probably be liquid cooled by then.