Server System Enhancements, RAM Additions and Storage Additions

[lucian2004 0]

I think OpenComputers is a great mod itself, but it needs more stuff and some improvements. Here's what I Think needs to be added/improved.

 

(LOTS of Reading!)

 

***SERVER SYSTEM ENHANCEMENTS/CHANGES***

 

1. When linking multiple servers via cable, then wiring it to a screen, numerous graphical glitches occur. This is because every server is trying to overlap eachother on the screen. I think that you should add a completely different screen, a screen that can control an entire server room in one console. For example: A terminal that, upon typing a command, turns on every server that is linked together. Or just computers in general. A system that can process commands within multiple systems without graphical gltiching/spazzing.

 

2. Detection of bad servers. Currently, if a server crashes (aka "Unrecoverable Error") then it just turns off. This is not very helpful as it seems like it is already off and it does not indicate that it actually failed. You should add a system that. upon a crash, instead of a shutdown, the server light goes red to indicate a failure. This is a problem because I made a server room, but for some reason, at random times, my servers will crash randomly. (I am still figuring out why) so that would help out greatly to tell me which serevers are off and which failed.

 

3. Large Server Racks. Nothing important, but I think it will be cool if you add large server racks. I understand you could just stack 2 server racks to make it large, but making a 2-black high server rack would ease up some issues with controlling both near eachother.

 

***RAM IMPROVEMENTS/ADDITIONS***

 

1. Tier 4 RAM. This would be nice because it would help processing speed and load speeds of the computers. For example, when running geo2holo, on tier 1 RAM cards, it is horribly slow, but on tier 3.5 RAM cards, it is still pretty slow. Tire 4, and possibly even tier 5 would be pretty cool.

 

2. More RAM Slots. A normal computer today has 4 RAM slots. And just like my previous suggestion, this would increase performance of the computer. If you can't/dont make the tire 4/5 RAM cards, adding 2 extra slots would be fine too. You could double the current max RAM by doing that, greatly improving performance and flexability of memory allocation.

 

***STORAGE ADDITIONS***

 

1. CD/ROM's. Having disks would be nice, as most computers today barely use floppy drives anymore. It would also increase the storage space that you would have. Imagine you as a super-programmer (whatever that is) and you filled up 5 floppy drives. You'd have to carry around 5 different floppy drives with different stuff in it which takes up inventory space and makes it harder to find things. With CD/ROM's, you could fit all of that into a sorted disk and only have one inventory slot allocated.

[kevinkk525 8]

1. Would you connect 4 real PCs to one monitor to the same input? Probably not So this is actually not a problem, just a configuration issue on your side, you could just have one pc using that screen and the other ones without a gpu at all.. If you want to control more than 1 server with a terminal, just set up something like ssh connections.

 

2.The idea with a light is nice. If you want an automatic way of detecting downtimes, let each server send a ping every minute.

 

3.A multiblock structure, don't know whether this is good, but looks good probably...

 

4.Definitely agree with you, more RAM would be nice, 2 slots are not many anyways.

 

5.CD-Roms are also nice, floppy disks are really old school. younger player probably see those things for the first time in their life

[eslachance 1]

The only point I have to make is about the screen: The only thing you'd need is something like a screen switcher - that little box that has 4 screen/keyboard/mouse outputs, and one input for a physical screen/keyboard/mouse (in our case, just screen and keyboard of course). Connect it to the server rack, connect it to a screen and keyboard, and boom. Could also be used to control multiple PC cases if they're adjacent to the block I guess?

[kevinkk525 8]

Well that could be possible and quite useful.

[Sangar 92]

1. As mentioned above, this is by design pretty much, you'll have to work around this by either coding a startup script or using switches/power distributores.

 

2. Not quite sure what you mean here; what's the difference for you between the server not showing a light to indicate it's off/crashed versus showing a red light? I mean, it'd be... relatively easy to add that, I suppose (would just have to send the info to the client that the computer is in an "errored" state and render an according overlay), just want to understand why it's even necessary?

 

3. Sorry, but no. Multiblocks are a bitch to code, IMHO, and this isn't quite worth the effort for me :/

 

4. RAM: nah, I've not really seen a good usecase where it'd actually be *needed*. You can usually either get creative, more efficient in your coding, or balance stuff over multiple computers, or use servers, etc. Or it's something you probably shouldn't be doing on low powered hardware such as ingame computers anyway ;-)

 

5. CDs have been discussed a couple of times before, but I remain of the opinion that they really don't add anything of value, given how portable floppies and even HDDs are in OC. Adding a medium that's basically that, but potentially only read-once seems pretty pointless to me. (But you could just make a resource packs that reskins floppies to CDs, and changes the floppy access sounds to CD access sounds if you're afraid people don't know what they are ;-) If that's true though, I'm proud to contribute to the general education in old hardware )

[SashaGelert 0]

to leave my comment on number 4: if there's really a need for more ram in game, users can always go change the config, doubling all the values.  Myself, i like the defaults, except I'm still learning to optimize my code, so i have EEPROMS set to 16k  but otherwise if i run out of ram on a tier 1, i just go build a tier 3.