I am happy to say this is my first post on VOGONS. I have been following the plethora of great information on here for a while now and I appreciate all the intelligent and useful information that everyone provides. I especially like to see all the retro hardware that’s out there and how people put it together.
I’ve been working on my computing area setup for a while now trying to get it right. The challenge (on top of living in a small apartment) is trying to have all the things I want to control within reach. I have a lot of different systems and components that I am trying to integrate into my "computing area" so that I have an “all in one solution” without looking too disorganized and disjointed. The systems and components I hope to have in my computing area are:
- MY RETRO PC SYSTEMS
[DOS(older), DOS(newer), Win98se, Win95, Win 3.11]
- SOME OF MY GAMING CONSOLES
[Wii, PS2 (I have dozens of other older systems like intellivision, Atari 2600, commodore 64, etc. but because I have no space, those will stay in storage for now so I use my emulation computer for most retro gaming)]
- MY MODERN(ISH) COMPUTERS
[P4(WinXP) for all my game emulators- running Maximus Arcade frontend, Core2Duo(WinXP) for later WinXP gaming and my graphics/photo workstation and internet browsing, and Core2Duo(Win 7) for newer Windows gaming and newer software]
- MY SONY STEREO SYSTEM and 40” LCD TV
[complete with Digital Surround Receiver (switching XP and Win7 computers, hooked up via optical cable), BluRay player, DVD Player(DiVX), cassette deck, vcr(x2), 8-track player, Betamax player, Laserdisc player, 40” LCD TV with 15pin VGA input (hooked up to game emulation computer, cable, and XP and win7 computers with video switch)
- SCANNER, PRINTER, GRAPHICS TABLET
[Canon flatbed scanner, HP LaserJet, WACOM tablet]
- MY MIDI GEAR
[Roland MT-32 (x2), MT-300, CM32L, YAMAHA MU50]
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Here is a couple of low quality photo of my computing area for now (just have my mobile phone now - I will upload more high quality photos when I have time to take them with my wide angle lens on my pro digital SLR camera).
For now, I have most of my stereo system hooked up (all fully functional) and only 2 computer systems hooked up [Win7, Win XP].
My retro systems in the photo below are going to be stacked to the left of my semi-'custom' (thank you IKEA) made desk. I tried to have all the beige cases look as similar as possible. I think that if you’re going to use and have all your retro systems together in one place, it is important that they are all similar sizes and look similar (maybe it’s a little OCD, but I like the look of having similar cases when next to each other or stacked).
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To run all of this mess, I am currently using an Avocent 8 port KVM switch. I have tested this unit with 5pin to ps/2 adapters for the keyboard and it works great.
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Here is some of my software in a bookshelf near my “desk/entertainment unit”.
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I hope to post some images of some more of my retro gear in the appropriate thread ("retro rig photo thread - Retro Rig Photo Thread or “Bought these (retro) hardware today” thread - Bought these (retro) hardware today).
When I get some time to update my computing area, I will post new photos.