machine room organization

[Jules Richardson]

On Tue, 2005-02-01 at 00:33 -0500, Saquinn624 at aol.com wrote:
> Does anyone on the list have any good tips for keeping a tidy machine room? 
> I'm sick of tripping over CPUs and dealing with cable Gorgons when switching 
> machines (I don't have near enough space for 1 monitor/keyboard/mouse per 
> workstation). A/B/[C/D/E] switches work great for serial consoles, but   not 
> workstations.

What sorts of machines? 

Video can be switched pretty easily regardless of the format; modern
screens generally don't sync down to the levels of old home machines
though, so you'll probably need two screens - one for more modern
equipment and one for the really old stuff.

Mice don't come in that many flavours generally - providing you rig
things so that the mouse doesn't lose power I expect you can get away
with mechanically switching the data line and the host machine won't get
upset.

Keyboards are more of a problem and there isn't much you can do there.
Generally you can arrange the hardware so the keyboard can be tucked
down beside the machine in question though.

Of course this is assuming the post was on topic and you're talking
about workstations from the last 20 years (i.e. desktop machines with a
decent amount of horsepower for the time), rather than just a room full
of PCs :-)