External peripheral devices are connected by high speed serial bus cables from the bottom ends of the option cards.
I desire the option to have many task or application windows open at the same time without them necessarily overlapping. I want to be able to glance at the progress of background tasks such as:
without having to dig them out from under other task windows on which I am currently working.
The display screen of my ideal PC is therefore large. It is a metre wide with an aspect ratio of 16 by 9. It uses flat solid-state display technology. It is built into the wall of my study booth with its centre line adjusted to my eye level when I am sitting in front of it.
My display screen faces away from the observation windows of my study booth. In fact, the relatively small North-facing windows flank the display screen on either side.
The display has its own internal video memory. Consequently, only changes to what is being displayed on the screen at any given time need to be transferred from the PC's video adapter memory to the display's internal memory. This minimises the data rate which must be carried by the cable between the PC's video adapter and the display. The connection is therefore provided by a high speed serial bus using a lossless compression protocol.
The display's high speed serial bus connection to the PC provides adequate bandwidth to accommodate the keyboard and mouse on the same daisy chain.
5¼ inch devices like CD & DVD drives are external to my ideal PC. This is because they are too deep to mount horizontally in my ideal PC's vertically mounted case. I expect all 5¼ inch devices to be superseded by 3½ inch equivalents, which can be mounted in the PC's internal drive bays.
My ideal PC has a sound card capable of supporting a 5-speaker configuration (4 + subwoofer). All speakers are USB digital active loudspeakers daisy-chained off the sound card's USB port. All speakers are mounted into the ceiling of my study booth. Provision is also made for listening on headphones. In addition to its normal uses, the sound system of my ideal PC is used to monitor radio and telephone communications.
My ideal PC is mounted vertically into a recess in the wall of my study booth. The case of my ideal PC is fixed between wooden uprights, forming what I call a shallow rack system. This has the advantage of being comfortably serviceable in situ at desk level. Other similar equipment cases are mounted above and below the desk-height case. This arrangement can be repeated in adjacent sections of wall as shown below.
For me, the main candidates for these other equipment cases are the larger external units of the radio equipment I described on my Internal Devices page. The most obvious one of these is the linear RF amplifier for the HF Amateur Band transceiver. Other cases contain bus backplanes for experimental and special-purpose cards.
The equipment case below the PC is the uninterruptible power supply and sealed indirect cooling system for all the electronic equipment in my study booth. Sealed indirect forced air cooling ensures that all the electronics remains perfectly clean and dust-free.
These extra equipment cases do not need to contain equipment. The one next to the PC on the right is a lockable safe providing a secure environment for storing removable media like diskettes, tapes, CDs and DVDs.
Wherever possible, my ideal PC's external peripherals are daisy chained on a single high speed serial bus as shown below in pink.
This minimises the intrusion of cabling in my work space. Bus cables to the loudspeakers and other specialised external peripherals are not shown. Notice the other recessed equipment cases around my study booth.
The wall frame of my study booth is shown as comprising 300mm by 60mm pine beams spaced 483mm apart. If this were adopted as a building standard, then standard 19 inch shallow rack cases - like that of my ideal PC - could be easily installed almost anywhere in a house or office. Conduit channels could also be provided to take cables and pipes without having to hack the building fabric.
I have always wanted to apply my information technology skills to what is called Alternative Technology or Egalitarian Engineering. I have begun to realise this ambition in the form of a project in which I develop a model for the kind of family economy which could form the basic element of the alternative social order outlined in my book The Lost Inheritance. It is known as The Hythe Project.
The project requires a 15 hectare campus with a minimal perimeter. It is equivalent to a circle 200 metres radius. This fits comfortably within the maximum operating range of an IEEE802.11b wireless local area network operating at 11 Mbps using external roof mounted antennas with clear lines of sight between them.
The campus has several 'buildings'. All 'buildings' are located within an inner circle 200 metres diameter. Each 'building' has either an internal wired local area network or a stand-alone ideal PC installed in another project member's study booth. Each 'building' operates as a peer within the campus wireless network.
Designated parking bays within the 200 metre diameter inner circle provide sites where authorised vehicle-based PCs can join the wireless network from time to time. Remote monitoring stations, some of which may be near the periphery of the campus, are also peers in the wireless network. These do not require a high data rate. If one of these stations needs to communicate with a 'building' on the far side of the inner circle, it does not matter if the wireless protocol drops communication down to 5.5, 2 or even 1 Mbps.
The project includes many kinds of alternative technology devices and systems. These all need to be monitored and controlled as an integrated enterprise. This is one of the most important roles of my ideal PC. Below is a list of some of the devices within the project which need to be monitored and controlled.
Monitoring and control software corresponding to each of these devices runs continuously in my ideal PC. Connection between my ideal PC and each of these devices is made through the wireless local area network.