WW: Colo Vending Machine

Matthew Petach mpetach at netflight.com
Mon Feb 20 16:54:29 UTC 2012


On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 7:34 AM, Jon Lewis <jlewis at lewis.org> wrote:
> Speaking of that sort of thing, I'd really LOVE if there were a device about
> the size of a netbook that could be hooked up to otherwise headless machines
> in colos that would give you keyboard, video & mouse.  i.e. a folding
> netbook shaped VGA monitor with USB keyboard and touchpad.  I know there are
> folding rackmount versions of this (i.e. from Dell), but I want something
> far more portable.  Twice in the past month, I'd had to drive 100+ miles to
> a remote colo and took a full size flat panel monitor and keyboard with me.
>  Has anyone actually built this yet?

Seeing as how most laptops have a VGA connector
and a keyboard/mouse connector on them, albeit
wired in the wrong direction (VGA connector feeds
video out from the video card, keyboard port takes
in input from external keyboard), the wiring and hard
parts are already mostly done; I'd *love* to have a
vendor release a laptop line that has a toggle switch
on it that a) only engages when the laptop is off, and
b) flips the logic--keyboard port gets connected to the
output of the laptop keyboard, and sends data out
rather than receives data, while the VGA port is
disconnected from the video card, and is instead
connected to the LCD panel of the laptop.  If an
enterprise vendor added support for a toggle like
that, I'm sure there would be dozens of companies
that would order them in a heartbeat, to be able to
do away with the constant need for crash carts
rolling around the datacenter aisles.  Heck, even
I'd order one--I could finally get rid of the old monitors
I keep around the house for debugging random
server problems in the rack upstairs.  :/

Matt




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