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"Quote: It deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.
Sometimes just "glazing over" a bit and looking at the letters, you can read them; (even if first or last letters are "wrong"). A technique my mother taught me was just to write all the letters out in a jumble (not a line, randomly but fairly close) then your brain tries to "follow" the letters to make sense of them. Sometimes seems to work for me!
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Ogre's lead in fair fight (5)
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Joust
"We can't stop here - this is bat country" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Yep 
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...dealing with a rats nest of wires with their computer setup?
This evening I've tasked myself with tearing down and rebuilding my entire computer setup to make it use the space more efficiently and to have a more organized approach.
This is going to be no easy feat. And I won't have internet access during the tear-down and rebuild, except for my phone.
Has anyone else successfully tamed the tangle of wires?
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I've started switching all to bluetooth (printer, keyboard, mouse), wifi, and HDMI (usb as a last resort) which has cleaned up my cabling somewhat. Although right now I'm stuck on ethernet because my wifi dongle isn't working with Ubuntu this time (was last time *shrug*)
Real programmers use butterflies
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Hey, great idea!
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Nope I'm scared to go in, don't know if I'll every make it back out.
When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know.
But if you listen, you may learn something new.
--Dalai Lama
JaxCoder.com
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I know the feeling. 
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Erm ... well ... no.
I really must do something about it all, but ... the trouble is that I used to have a UPS which had IEC female, so when it died I used standard IEC lead to connect the IEC males that went to the kit instead of ripping it all out and wiring it properly. So I have a rats-nest of mains, another of CAT5, another of USB, ...
And a sh*t load of dust that I don't dare go near because I know something will stop working if I do, and it's dark down there ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Is it a small UPS or something like a rack mount unit?
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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It was a "small" one - floor standing, bloody heavy, Chinese, FVQ*
* Failed Very Quickly. About a year, I think - I did a powerfail test and it was absolutely fine, except when it went to internal power it turned itself off ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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IKEA has the "tidy cabling" kits. One includes this ribbed tubing with a split down the middle which you can use to lay in a number of cables instead of tying them.
Some big box hardware stores include metal / plastic channels for cabling that is more permanent while still fitting in with the base boards / decor.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
modified 26-Apr-20 18:13pm.
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Is that what it's called, "tidy cabling?" I just searched those keywords on the IKEA site and nothing resembling what you describe.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Montera, Signum, Rabalder and Fixa.
There are probably more, but those are the one I find now.
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Sorry: Cable management & accessories
Or "cabling" would have worked. I was para-phrasing 
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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Split loom tubing / corrugated sleeving . McMaster Carr in the US, or your local Industrial electrical supply. Spiral wrap ( sleeving ) works very well, but at 2 turns per inch on small diameters it's slow. The zipper stuff can be nice.
But, I'd just use velcro, 3/8" wide roll cut the ends on a diagonal - it makes it easier to wrap and to remove. And you get to tie to legs... to hold things in place. ( We cheated and used large binder clips to dress cables to the metal desk. )
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I am curious about which kinds of cables you are troubled with.
"In the old days" we had no sort of buses: The printer had its LPT cable, the modem its COM cable, the scanner its proprietary format cable, the keyboard its DIN- og OS/2-style cable, the mouse either of COM, OS/2 or proprietary cable... It was also common to plug the power cable to the screen into the power supply of the PC.
Nowadays, there is a single USB cable to a hub where you plug in both printer, scanner, external disks, PC speakers/microphone and external webcam (for stationary PCs). Keyboard and mouse cables are gone; they have been wireless for many years. USB memory sticks go in the socket on the PC front panel (or,if that is unavailable, the socket on the left hand edge of the screen).
My PC has one USB cable, one network cable and one screen cable. I do have a USB WiFi-adapter that could have been plugged into the USB hub, to keep the number of cables to the PC down, but it wouldn't be suitable: The PC-to-hub cable goes through a hole in the wall, and the router connection is on the PC side of the wall, not the hub side.
So I think of the spaghetti bowl as something of the past. For me, USB made a revolution that turned night into day, quite a few years ago.
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Well I have the cable modem, router, two Western Digital NAS devices, three monitors, three USB hubs, a seven port network switch with all ports in use, a do-it-yourself NAS that I built out of a small PC, a desklamp, and PC speaker system. Oh and a second PC with all attendant hookups. Plus I didn't even mention the UPS and two different printers.
And each one of these devices has its own power brick so I have three power strips.
All all of this ends up in a big tangled mess.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
modified 26-Apr-20 19:23pm.
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If you have each of these units connected separately to the PC, I can understand that you have a cable mess.
I have deliberately tried to avoid this, e.g. by connecting printer, scanner (in your case: two printers), and speakers through a single cable, rather than three, to the PC. The network router is located next to the network termination ("cable modem"), away from the PC, and doesn't affect the cable mess. My UPS does not appear as a separate unit; it is provided by the controller for my solar panel setup; I have had socket installed where the PC is located, served by this controller, so it doesn't add to the cable mess.
All my external disks are either USB powered or 12VDC, and I have a 12VDC supply from the solar power battery bank to the shelf where the external disks are located, with no need for power adapters; just short cables to the 12V socket directly behind the disks.
If your NAS disks really are Network Attached storage: Isn't the very idea that you access them over the network? So you locate these disks in a separate location, away from your PC. There will be cables by the NAS, but not that many, and it won't contribute to the mess behind your PC. I do not have a NAS yet, but if I get one, I will certainly locate it near the cable modem and network router, not by the PC.
With such an approach, the mess could be cleaned up somewhat. Yet, it is obvious that you have a more complex setup than I do. Yet I think that you could improve things a lot simply by moving away stuff that doesn't have to be sitting next to the PC (such as NAS, network router etc.), and use those USB hubs so that e.g. a single cable runs from the PC to the table with all the moderate-speed devices (printers and such). If they are USB3 hubs, you can certainly hook up external USBs through a hub as well. If they are all USB2 hubs, replacing at least one with a USB3 one, for external disks (and maybe for a USB2 hub serving printers etc.) might be worth the money.
So even though you will have some cable mess left (not the least the cables to the three screens!), there is a certain hope for some cleanup!
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Sounds like you have a pretty cool setup with your solar system.
As far as cleaning it up somewhat, I think you're spot on. It can definitely be better than the way it is now. It was originally put together without much thought to minimizing wiring.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I wouldn't bother to untangle and reconfigure anything. I'd just get some gasoline and a match.
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I was considering some C-4 explosive myself.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Nope - I'm afraid I'll break something. 
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Not so much untangling the mess (a cosmetic thing) as keeping it under control.
After Superstorm Sandy I was in the position to fill my home from scratch. When I started to connect things in areas where many a cable would exist (per past experience) I used wire labels for the two ends of the wires. Initially, just for power cables, but then form others, as well.
Now, reguardless of the mess that will develop sooner or later, I can easily find both ends of any cable. Useful so you know what you unplug/disconnect as well as, should you desire, removing and re-bundling cables one-by-one without worries.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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