• Addison (unregistered) in reply to cph
    cph:
    That "old desktop PC" that "has performed flawlessly for 9 months" probably draws around 100W when idle... That's almost $100 wasted in electricity costs over 9 months assuming average SoCal prices of $.14/kWh.

    Buying a remote-enabled power switch would have been cheaper overall !!

    You're forgetting that power comes out of maintenance costs, not IT. So essentially, it's free! YAY corporations.

  • (cs) in reply to pink_fairy
    pink_fairy:
    DaveK:
    Watson:
    "A little more complex and ... a little more elegant".

    No, we don't do any oxymorons here, nosir.

    We do, but site rules only allow only self-affirmatory oxymorons.
    What the heck would one (or both, assuming the transitive property) of those be?
    A joke, but you didn't get it.

    An oxymoron is a self-contradictory juxtaposition of terms.

    A self-affirmatory oxymoron is therefore a self-affirmatory self-contradictory juxtaposition of terms.

    That in itself is a self-contradictory juxtaposition of terms.

    In other words "self-affirmatory oxymoron" is an oxymoron. Possibly even a reflexive or meta-oxymoron, but I was going to just be subtle and not spell it out.

    However, you defeated me. Drat and double drat!

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to anonymous coward
    anonymous coward:
    If you're really in the business of abusing obsolete technology to get some general purpose IO lines, old parallel port cards give you 8 open collector outputs capable of switching about 10mA each.

    Attach these lines to a relay and you could reset 8 machines per card. If you didn't have a relay, or if you just want to live dangerously, forget the relay and sink the +5v side of the reset switch directly into one of the pins on the parallel port, making sure to join the 0v reference of both motherboards so the logic levels line up and you've got the same solution. You'll need a current limiting resistor for each line if you want the solution to last more than a day without blowing up the parallel port card.

    Also, the flow control lines of a serial port can be used to similar effect.

    Make sure that you don't connect it to the same machine. On boot, the parallel port has a I/O checkup which sets the 8 bits to 1 for a second. This will result in an infinite reboot loop.

  • spike breon (unregistered) in reply to kastein

    "turtles right the way down" is the proper phraseology, but I can only find references to "turtles all the way down." What is the origin of "turtles right the way down?"

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