Cynbe's Desktop

After a quarter century of hacking, I finally have a hardware setup I really like! Here is a snapshot of my setup as of 99Sep28:

Twin 21-inch Viewsonic P815 monitors. I spent weeks sorting through 21" monitors before settling on these, and I love them to death! Definitely a couple of steps above most plain 21" monitors -- they run 220MHz video bandwidth and at the time I bought them were the only monitors whose recommended resolution was 1800x1440. They now have an even higher resolution P817 big brother, if you feel cramped at 1800x1440. These are Hitachi tubes, if you're a Trinitron fan you'll want to get something else.
Twin computers driving the monitors: I like this because it gives me a stable machine to use while I'm reconfiguring the other, lets me swap hardware to track down problems, lets me boot an alternate operating system on one if needed, and lets each be a de facto backup for the other. We build our own boxes from parts mostly bought on the web, sometimes at Frys when we're impatient.
An AMD K6-2 330MHz processor in each box. I'm delighted to see AMD giving Intel a run for its money -- these are my first non-Intel CPU chips. I usually buy whichever processor gives the best MIPS/dollar ratio at any given time -- I find I don't need the very latest high-speed chips for the development I do, and I like to test on something closer to what my typical user is using anyhow.
Tyan motherboards. I've used a dozen of these now, and it seems like every time I use another brand, I wind up regretting it. I use AT motherboards whenever possible, I've had terrible experiences with ATX powersupplies, which I now avoid like the plague. I'm currently running Tyan S1590S motherboards.
About 256Meg of ram per machine. (Fluctuates.) I prefer to buy cheap IDE drives (instead of SCSI) and get back the performance by putting the savings into buying more RAM. Since I mostly do code development, it is easy to cache all the files I use in ram, reducing wear and tear on the drives.
A couple of Western Digital Caviar drives per machine. I've used dozens of Western Digital drives at this point, and I swear by them. I find they wear out in direct proportion to how many seeks they do, which is one good reason to install lots of ram. Western Digital has always been very good about doing warranty replacement of drives instantly with no questions asked -- a wonderful constrast to other companies I've dealt with, and enough reason all by itself to stick to Western Digital, in my book.
3c905 100/10MHz Ethernet cards. Our house network has a dozen or so machines all told, plus we have three on the net at ACTLAB, and we use these cards exclusively in all of them. We've had no problems whatever with any of them, in years of operation.
Matrox Millenium PowerDoc Edition video card in one box: At the time I bought my monitors, this was the only one that would drive them to full resolution. The card is obsolete now, but still works fine so I keep using it. My only regret is that XFree86 doesn't support it at 1800x1440 resolution. I'm running a Voodoo2 on my other box, and still waiting for OpenGL support for it under Linux so I can use its 3D capabilities. :(
Twin Altec Lansing powered computer speaker systems, one per computer. Even my wife likes these, and she's one of the top sound engineers on the planet (she did Jimi Hendrix among others) and very picky. (I should do a page on our home stereo sometime. No kidding, the upstairs lights dim when the bass kicks in.) She recommends that when you have no better criterion, just buy the heaviest computer speaker on the store shelf: More weight means more magnet means better sound, everything else being equal. We have our entire music CD collection mp3'd onto a few gig of disk, so my computers are also my study stereo. I'm listening to Whales of the Pacific: Tranquil Moods as I type this.
An AWE32 sound card in each box, mainly because they have pretty good support under Linux.
Dual GyroPoint mice from Gyration. I've tried just about every mouse in existence, and I love these mice -- I bought four spares just in case they go out of business. You can use them as regular mice, which I do much of the time, but when my wrist gets stiff I can switch to using them in midair courtesy of their internal microgyroscopes. My second-favorite mouse is the Logitech thumb-marble: It just feels incredibly cool as a change of pace.
A Kinesis Essential ergonomic keyboard. Don't confuse this with dorky junk "ergonomic" keyboards from certain major corporations. I've bought and used a wide variety of keyboards (including for example the one-handed BAT keyboard) and the Essential is by far the best affordable keyboard I've found: It has added years to the life of my hands. (I have far too many hacker friends who can no longer type, and must use voice I/O. :( ) It is especially good for emacs hackers like me, because it puts the control key under the thumb instead of off on the weak little pinkie. My pinky used to ache.
We've hacked the Essential by adding a switch on it which switches it back and forth between my two desktop computers, with a pair of LEDs on the keyboard indicating which one is currently active.
I like the Essential, but I'm not in love with it. Since in my opinion nobody is making anything close to a rationally engineered keyboard, I intend to build my own soon. Prime design goals: not a chord keyboard (chord keyboards at least double the wear and tear on your hand, plus they slow you down), and finger motion to press any key should never exceed five millimeters (wear and tear rises as the square of the keystroke distance). Plus the mouse should be integrated into the keyboard (which will probably look more like a bicycle grip), probably using GyroPoint technology.
A LinkSys ProConnect KVM 2-Port CPU Switch handles the actual switching. We tried cheap mechanical switches and they are not adequate. The switch would allow me to use one mouse for both machines, but I find it very handy to have a mouse for each machine, which lets me mouse around on each screen without having to switch the keyboard.
Debian Linux. Darren Stalder turned me on to Debian when he volunteered to help me install my first personal Linux back about 1994 or so: I've never looked back. I use RedHat on some machines, but find it a pain in the ass -- I'm always happy to get back to Debian. I'm running pre-release Potato on both boxes at the moment, since so much sound software simply refuses to run on Slink. Usually I stick with the current stable release.
I'm currently running the Ice window manager just because I have simple needs and it doesn't crash or otherwise aggravate me. I've tried GNOME a time or two but it remains too unstable for my taste. (My wife loves it.) All I want is a dozen or so ssh and emacs windows per screen and stable operation.
I've switched from using xterms to Eterm from Enlightenment just because transparent windows look so cool. I've got a collection of a few dozen great images of galaxies and nebula from the Astronomy Picture of the Day which I use as root images on one of my desktop boxes, and a collection of Chinese Scenery and 3D Fractals which I use as root images on the other desktop box: A trivial Perl script selects a new root image randomly once per hour on each machine. Combined with transparent Eterms that let the background show through (at shade 50% so the text reads clearly) I find the effect entrancing.

That's it for the desktop! We've also got boxes around the house to run the house webcam and such, but they are less interesting.