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I have a problem. It is a problem I try to hide out of sight and out of mind, one I try to pretend doesn't exist. But it does, and every so often it raises its ugly head to bite me. Most recently, I needed to replace an Ethernet switch as I needed more ports. As I unplugged the old switch, my monitor turned off. Why? Because under my desk I have a cable catastrophe. The mere act of unplugging the old switch had so disturbed and enraged the rat's nest of cables under my desk that in retaliation it decided to turn off my monitor.
So intertwined and confused is the mess beneath my desk that even the most mundane of acts—plugging in a new gadget, removing an old one, sometimes just even moving my feet—threatens to destroy everything.
TFA addresses the perennial problem of cable jungles. I use zip ties. What are the best solutions Soylentils have come up with, and what are their pros and cons?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 09 2015, @12:02PM
I do the ventilated closet strategy in my home office. Its quieter that way. So my desk needs to be next to a closet door, so what.
Note that in both my case and yours, you're not eliminating the seething mass of snakes you're just moving it from one place you don't see to another place you don't see.
You can "win" by decentralization making each station simpler and easier to build cleanly. I could put my entire house's stuff on my desk but its less messy to have the firewall and wireless access point in place, the giant fileserver and ethernet switch in the basement, etc.
Really its all a bunch of complaining about nothing. I've seen (and made) far worse cable messes with ham radio stations. Workbenches can be worse, I have somewhere over a dozen but less than two dozen "things" on the electronic workbench (a couple power supplies, oscilloscopes, various signal and pulse generators from audio to microwave, frequency counters, meters, an ancient RLC bridge that works too well to dispose of, it adds up)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by basicbasicbasic on Wednesday September 09 2015, @01:19PM
Well yes, it doesn't mean there are fewer cables in total - but by separating one big mass of snakes you make two smaller and more manageable masses of snakes.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 09 2015, @01:59PM
I'm pretty sure the cleanup process of tidying cables scales way beyond linear, so splitting is a win, when possible.
It is fundamentally a combination of a sort to grab the right cable and a routing operation to pathfind its cleaner route so that's not gonna be linear.