While I was fixing my computer this morning from 2:30a-4:45a I came up with a really interesting idea of a house with multiple integrated computers. Screw desktops in a fixed location, what if you had monitors or tvs, keyboards, and mice in multiple rooms and could control multiple desktops from whatever room you were in by use of an advanced integrated computer network with a selector system for each room?

Basically, start out with a closet for the shell of the computer. Set up the motherboard, PSU, harddrive, videocard, and other internals in the closet and secure them to a shelf. This will 1) Make the internals incredibly easy to access, 2) allow for maximum airflow (hell, you could even route an A/C vent to the closet for cooling ). After that, wire a selector-switch/switch-box to the computer and the console(s) in the room(s) you're wanting to use your computer in.

The console will contain many different input and output peripherals. An optical drive (nicknamed on the PC by which room it's in?), S-Video / VGA / Composite / Serial video output, audio output, and USB ports. All these will be set up to a selector switch that will dictate which computer is receiving and sending the information through the console.

The keyboard, mouse, monitor, and other components can be connected via that console and the selector switch choose which room controls the computer at the time.




Here's a slightly different concept I painted in GIMP for multiple computers networked together. Black line shows that the computers are networked together.


Here's what the console might look like:

Hmmm, that's a really interesting idea....it would be kind of nice, but the only problem would be that you can't upgrade the software that easily

@Swiv: We have laptops nowadays

Another idea, a server and a bunch of dumb terminal internet tablets.

Eeems: The software? That'd... be incredibly easy... The hardware? That'd be easy too, the way it's set up.

Ultimate Dev'r: The idea is to have the ability to already have everything set up on a large scale in multiple rooms. Instead of having multiple desktops or laptops set up in different rooms you can have the same computer set up on a standard computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse in one room and then have it set up to a big flat screen, wireless keyboard and mouse, and surround sound system, with the same thing you had open in the other room. You can't transfer RAM to other computers easily
I guess it could be easier by just setting up a docking system, but eh. Just something that was running through my head and decided to share.


EDIT: One of the other things I had thought up originally when I was thinking of this idea, is to use a server instead. Not just a desktop, but also a dedicated server. For music, videos, or server applications in general.

What you want is a thin client. Its been tried before, it never took off because frankly the idea just doesn't work. It sounds cool, but in practice it sucks.

As far as the implementation goes: http://linuxgazette.net/124/smith.html

I like this idea but I would have one set of devices on the wall that could go to any server for instance one USB CD drive at each location, it would be interesting to see how you would run the usb and other wires though, I believe USB has a very low limit to cord length before it fails. I would use something like a USB to Ethernet adapter. I think this could have some use especially as something to minimize hardware for a mythtv implementation or just having a DVR as one of the servers and a IR forwarding system to allow the DVR to be used around the house.

Yeah. This idea was mainly for use as an HTPC.

I understand what you mean about the USB issue. Is it possible to set up some sort of amplifier? I'm not sure how all that would work
USB to Ethernet would work quite nicely, regardless.

I think it is not a amplification issue but a quality issue. I had an idea that might be easier to set up that would have similar use though, set up diskless comps at each spot and make sure the OS supports hibernation, then make an OS image that is rw so that you can boot however many comps as you have images for and they can be moved between locations, this would work fine on Gigabit Ethernet but it would be cool and probably work better to use a striped SATA 2 raid array for fast storage (or some equivalent) with fiber-channel or equivalent networking, however while that might be optimal it would cost a whole lot of money and therefore would be out for most people.

Basically, you're talking about root filesystem on NFS. Network latency would probably have the largest effect on performance in such a system, and you only really need to work about I/O throughput if you plan to have multiple clients hammering the backend storage at the same time.

Again, you are still talking about a thin client. Only in this case you are talking about a network boot thin client. Your idea isn't original. Its been done before, and it sucks. Disk latency is already the largest performance killer of desktop usage, and thin clients make it much, much worse. Thus, thin clients always feel very sluggish and unresponsive, and therefore suck.