I just solved the problem.  The old Apple Extended Keyboard, as revered by Apple fans as my IBM Model M, continued the function key mapping past F12, adding F13, F14, and F15 where Print Screen, Scroll Lock, and Pause/Break is on an IBM 101-key layout.  Then they mapped F14 and F15 to dim and brighten the screen, respectively.  See the problem?  Yeah, the IOGear hotkey is “dim dim”!

It turns out that this is easy to fix.  Leopard’s Keyboard & Mouse Preferences panel includes a tab to remap Keyboard Shortcuts.  Down at the bottom of the list is “Display”.  Expand it and you’ll see the two mappings in question - just un-check them and you’re good to go!

While you’re there, marvel at how none of the other function key shortcuts match up to their functions on the pre-2008 MacBook uses!  It’s a really bizarre oversight on the part of Apple to map bright/dim to F14/F15 and to F1/F2 on the same computer at the same time, depending if you’re using the built-in keyboard or not!  Apparently, the company shifted all the mappings around for the late 2007 desktop and early 2008 portables, too.

By the way, about that KVM - it’s pretty good, especially for the money.  I previously used a GCS62, which is a PS/2 in and out model with no audio, but the GCS632U is more suited to weirdos like me that like to use a PS/2 keyboard and mouse with a modern computer.  It takes PS/2 in but sends USB out to the connected computers, and includes audio, too.  It’s rock-solid, unlike the Belkin Flip I tried before, but I do wish the audio cable wasn’t captive to the video like it is - it’s just not long enough for the Mac.

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

How to Keep an IOGear KVM from Dimming Your Mac’s Screen

In this era of switchers, Boot Camp, KVM, USB, and virtualization, the question of how to deal with computer keyboard irregularities has become all the more important.  One of the most critical usability factors in cross-platform typing is the question of what to do about the so-called modifier keys: Control, Command, Alt, and the like.  See, each platform has its own key combinations for GUI shortcuts and common operations like copy and paste.  And although most are similar, they are different enough to frustrate even the expert user.

The Alt and Control keys found on most PC keyboards date from the first PCs, with so-called Windows and Menu keys introduced in 1995 and Fn or Function modifier keys found on laptops both before and after.  Combined with the Shift key (which pre-dated the personal computer) these are the most common modifier keys used today.

Most Windows commands use some combination of Ctrl, Alt, and Shift but the mapping is haphazard at best.  Generally, Alt-combinations control the GUI (switching windows and selecting menus) while Ctrl-combinations perform actions (copy and paste) but this is not always the case.  However, even though variations abound, the standard 101-key IBM layout dating from 1986 (shown at right on a 1987 IBM Model M) has dominated.  This places two “Ctrl” keys at the outermost position of the bottom row of keys with two “Alt” keys flanking the space bar.  The Windows, Menu, and (on notebooks) Fn keys are squeezed in between Ctrl and Alt.

The situation is quite different on the Macintosh.   Hardware-wise, the Mac inherited the Command (”open apple”/”cloverleaf” ⌘) and Option keys found on the Apple IIe of 1982, and added a Control key with the Mac II and SE to enable business-friendly terminal emulation capabilities.  As seen in the keyboard at right from my Mac SE, the Control key, as on the PC XT, occupies the space now associated with Caps Lock at left in the third row, while the Option and to-be-named Command key (with the Apple outline) sit roughly where the Windows and Alt keys would eventually live.

The popular Apple Extended Keyboard swapped Caps Lock and Control, settling the key layout of the Macintosh that has lasted through today, and added “Alt” to the Option key, clarifying its purpose.  In 2007, Mac fans were thrown into a frenzy as Apple made one more change, removing the Apple from the Command key and (finally) adding the word, “Command”, in its place.

If you’re a geek like me, you will find the history of these keys to be an interesting aside.  Wanting to add more functionality to their (integrated) keyboards, most early personal computer makers looked for ways of adding modifier keys without “breaking” existing programs, which were hard-coded for earlier layouts.  Most manufacturers settled on the so-called “Bucky bit” strategy, adding keys that modified the binary ASCII code from other keys. Alt set the eighth bit to 1, turning H (01001000) into 11001000, which could be a non-printable control character or one from another character set.  Similarly, Ctrl zeroed out the sixth and seventh places, turning both H and h (01101000) into backspace (00001000).  Apple took a different tack, literally wiring the open and closed apple keys to the joystick buttons on the Apple II.  Of course, nowadays keyboards merely send appropriate ASCII signals using a microcontroller, but these ingenious approaches certainly showed creativity!

This brings us to today.  Although both the PC and Mac feature a key called Control on the left, the Mac places Alt/Option next, followed by Command.  On the PC, the center spot is taken by the Windows key and the Alt is on the right.

This mapping problem is compounded by the fact that these keys do different things.  Command on the Mac takes on the GUI and action duties from both Control and Alt on the PC.  Alt and Ctrl stay true to their original uses, modifying the result of other keypresses and sending control codes, respectively.  None of this was much of an issue in the days of incompatible keyboard protocols, but today’s USB devices can be used with either platform, and virtualization and remote control have made rapid switching much more common.

Consider my case:  I use an IOGear USB KVM switch to control both my Mac and PC from a single keyboard (that ancient IBM) and mouse, as well as to output audio and video to a single LCD monitor.  I find myself switching rapidly between Vista on the PC, OS X on the Mac, and Vista in VMware Fusion, throughout the day.  And when I unplug the Mac and set it on my lap (in “Better Energy Saver” mode to keep from burning myself), I am suddenly using a Mac keyboard for OS X and Vista as well.  So sometimes the key combination for “copy” uses the key all the way to the left and sometimes it uses the one closest to the space bar, and this variation does not necessarily follow the OS I’m currently using or the keyboard I’m currently typing on.

OS X thoughtfully allows you to change the mapping of Control, Option, and Command in the Keyboard and Mouse preferences panel, and even lets you set different customization for different keyboards.  Lots of ex-Windows users use this to swap Command and Control with Control and Windows on a Windows keyboard, which harmonizes many familiar DOS/Windows command shortcuts.  And if you’re as insane as some Apple fans users, you could also use this panel to move Caps Lock and Option back to their original locations.

But is it a good idea to mess with the keyboard settings like this?  I think not.  Eventually you will need to use a “correct” keyboard, whether you are using a Windows or OS X computer, and crutches like this just serve to frustrate your efforts to acclimatize.  I think it’s best to simply live with it - to get used to using the right key combinations, no matter which input device or operating system one is using.

Of course, there’s one more problem for me.  See that keyboard layout up at the top?  My primary keyboard is, as I’ve mentioned, a 1987 IBM Model M.  Despite possibly being the best keyboard ever made, it is a 101-key model, not the more modern 104-key Windows unit.  I’ve gotten used to using Ctrl-Esc for the Windows key, and even Shift-F10 for the menu.  But I’m having a real problem with OS X because I simply do not have a Command key, and no amount of “getting used to it” will change this fact.  So for now I had to remap Control to Command, and I will have to live without a Control key in OS X.  Anyone have a better idea?

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Command and Control: The Clash of Keyboards

This is probably a good idea. A company needs a single name, and NetApp is what lots of people (even me) have long called the company. Plus, it’s never good to have your company name be the same as one of your products, at least when you make more than one. And NetApp has lots of different products, many of which are not network appliances…

They’ve added a new logo, too, which ironically looks like a thick blue dolmen to me, but was probably supposed to evoke a door and the letter, N. I always liked the old round peg in a round hole idea, myself… But then again, I always kinda liked yellow and purple and silver storage devices, too!

Remember the old days, when it was Apple Computer, HP still stood for Hewlett-Packard, Sun for Stanford University Network, and EMC for Evil Machine Company? (Just kidding, guys, I know it was Egan, Marino and Einstein’s equation…) But the world will end if IBM ever changes its logo!

Update: More coverage:

• Marc Farley liked the old logo better
• Robin Harris is wined and dined by NetApp in New York - where’s my invite, guys?
• Rajeev Karamchedu thinks it looks like an IBM lego house…
• Zerowait calls it a staple and compares it to New Coke - Ouch!
• The Register is even less complimentary…

Image by Andrew Dunn courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, cc-by-sa-2.0

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

The Artist Formerly Known As Network Appliance

See, I’ve had my work ripped off by big content providers repeatedly over the years, but never could put into words why it bothered me so much.  I mean, it’s not like I was profiting from that snapshot or HOWTO document, so why should I care if someone else does?

But once you juxtapose the attitude of those same companies about my fair use rights of legally-purchased content, the grain that’s been chafing me becomes clear.  Media companies seem to think it’s ok for them to steal from the little guys (either by choice or through a lack of rigor, but they’ll come after me if I try to do anything at all with their content.  The article’s anecdote of a stolen dog photo used in a sports broadcast surrounded by ominous copyright warnings really sums up the whole situation!

The first time I experienced this was back in 1997 or so, when I received an email from a fellow Linux hippie alerting me that a recent Linux book contained a number of online texts, mine included.  The book, Linux File Systems, was “written” by Moshe Bar, better known for his work on OpenMosix and Xen, but also known as a writer for a number of other books and a columnist for latter-days Byte.  I confronted him about his wholesale copying of my LVM walkthrough in his book, and he apologized, claimed he’d run out of time (which is easy to believe, looking at the book), and blamed his editor.  The publisher, McGraw Hill, claimed the book wasn’t selling well anyway so they couldn’t offer me any compensation.  Being young(er) and foolish(er) at the time, I let it drop.

Over my later years of writing columns and articles for Storage Magazine, InfoStor, and others, I became aware of wholesale unauthorized translation and reprinting of English magazines in other languages.  A number of my articles were published in Russian magazines, for example.  Again, I did nothing but chuckle about seeing my name in Cyrilic.

So why the picture of the Saab 900 above?  Because just last month, I was notified that that exact photo was used by the German paper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, (Nov 23th 2007, page 11) without permission and in violation of the license.  This has happened to a number of my other Wikimedia Commons photos, with appearances in a number of papers and magazines that I know of, and probably more besides…

What’s to do?  I suppose I should have pushed harder when these uses were brought to my attention.  I suppose I could have banded together with others to protest.  But I did nothing.  What would you do?

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Living in a Copyrighted World

First, an introduction to the Maximus: It’s a 113-key PC keyboard. But each key is actually a mini OLED display, so the user can apply custom labels on the fly based on what application is in use. This is fairly cool - the (Photoshopped) demo pictures show a specialized Quake layout and talk about Hiragana and even Quenya (for all you Elves in the house!).

So imagine a massive keyboard (most common ‘boards have 101 to 105 keys) with glowing, possibly animated, keys. One that has to be plugged into its own power supply because no USB port could handle the load. One where the layout might just change on you when you alt-tab (or command-tab - Mac OS X works, too) over to another application. One that cost you more than many desktop PCs.

Having a hard time imagining it? Well, you’ll have to because even though it’s been the geeky fanboy’s dream since 2005, it’s still not shipping. Wait ’till February, they say! In the mean time, you can get a fairly cool 3-key version (is something with just three keys really a keyboard?!?) called the Mini Three for just $150! And as if one vaporware keyboard wasn’t enough, the Optimus people just announced variants with 47, 10, and one (One?!? The space bar?!?) programmable key for the cost of a sweet hi-def digicam, a full-price TiVo Series 3, or an iPhone (plus tax)! And they’re all shipping in February! Really! Here, look at the box!

This is madness. I love keyboards, but this thing is not a keyboard. It’s a multi-display peripheral that also has keys - which is why the Mini Three is fairly cool.

Me? I’ll stick to my beloved 1987 IBM Model M - a keyboard that has served me for nearly two decades, attached to a dozen different PCs. A keyboard that people can truly wax enthusiastic for, since it’s a keyboard not some multi-display monstrosity. A keyboard that you can type 90 words per minute on. A keyboard that can handle a coffee spill. A keyboard that makes people on the other end of conference calls say “what is that noise?” A keyboard you can still buy (new old stock) for under $100!

Though I do miss the programmability of the Gateway AnyKey sometimes…

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Optimus Maximus: It’s Beyond This Keyboard-Head

To my eyes, a Seagate buy-out would be little different from the sale of IBM’s disk drive operations to Hitachi back in 2002 or their sale of the PC group to Lenovo two years later. Seagate is a component maker, and although it is a critical piece of the storage industry it is not really a strategic entity. Certainly, the company’s contributions to standards like SATA, SAS, and (yes) hybrid drives are worthwhile, but apart from evault, the company contributes little to the value-added services landscape.

Still, if a buy-out softened scrappy Seagate I would miss the healthy contribution between them, Western Digital, Hitachi, and the other disk vendors. And it would be an end of an era, with Alan Shugart’s old company going the way of MG Rover and the rest.

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Seagate Going to China?

Boucher suspects (as do I) that 10 Gb speed will make TOEs much more critical, and he expects Alacritech to be well positioned to take advantage of this shift.  He sees TOE becoming integrated with future PC chipsets, and not just for storage.  Asked when he expects “the year of 10 gigabit” to come, Boucher estimated 2009.  Sounds reasonable to me!

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Larry Boucher: The Future Is Mine! (in 2009…)

There are now five Foskett feeds!

1. All Posts (the superset of the following)
2. Computer History - mapped to the Computer History category and containing posts about this history of computers and other oldy moldy topics
3. Enterprise Storage - mapped to the Enterprise Storage category and containing lots of industry news and opinions
4. Personal - mapped to the Personal category and containing posts of interest to friends and family
5. Terabyte Home - mapped to the Terabyte Home category and containing posts about TiVo, iPhone, SoundBridge, home NAS, Windows, and the like

There will be much overlap between categories (see the posts in the current list) but I thought this might help folks not have to listen to so much that they don’t care about. Just call me Fox News!

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Five Foskett Feeds!

He talks about how parallel NFS (pNFS) is set to trickle down to the enterprise from the high-performance compute labs. It’s always amusing to me to think of things trickling down to the enterprise storage market, but in this case he’s right - massive clusters (and Panasas for that matter) have yet to make much of a mark on the enterprise computing world.

He goes on to talk about how escalating disk capacity has lead to unacceptable rebuild times in RAID sets. You tell ‘em, Garth! Apparently, he’s been beating the multiple-parity drum since 1989 (!?!) - I hadn’t realized that RAID 6 was that old, since it’s not in the paper, but he claims they invented it, too, way back when. Who am I to contradict the Bob Metcalfe of storage?

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Garth Gibson: Still Relevant After All These Years

Now a handful of storage players are talking about SSD’s again, including some respectable names like LSI and Xiotech and some lesser-known outfits like Solid Data Systems and Texas Memory Systems. IDC is predicting mainstream uptake of the technology, too, but note that they’re mostly talking about the PC market, not enterprise storage.

I say that if SSD ever gains footing in the enterprise, it’ll most likely be in a virtualized hybrid system, acting like a mega-cache. Or maybe a non-RAM permacache, if you will! Of course, we’ve seen just how much uptake that feature has had, eh EMC? But hey, it could happen. Even though Apple is soaking up more than a quarter of the world’s NAND flash this year, maybe they’ll force prices down. Or maybe Samsung’s or Hynix’s PRAM will conquer the world!

Let’s get serious, folks. What good is SSD? It improves random access read performance over disk at the expense of longevity, throughput, and, well, expense! ReadyBoost looked like a nice application for flash memory, since the potential content was bounded and could fit on a flash drive, but it seems to have done precisely nothing for performance.

If enterprise applications could benefit from better random access performance, we’d be putting large amounts of memory in front of the disks already. Oh, wait, that’s right, we already do that! Modern enterprise arrays have gobs of cache, more than any SSD, and use it quite effectively. Remember the old RAID-5 penalty?

SSD just serves to remind me of one of those performance-tuning axioms I learned long ago: It’s always better to let an intelligently-designed system manage itself than try to second-guess it. This applies to all areas of system performance tuning, from filesystem and LUN layouts to cache tuning. And this is why permacache and things like it never caught on.

And it’s why SSD will continue to play just a bit part in the enterprise until it’s just as cheap as disk. Like that’ll happen anytime soon.

Edit: Looks like I got the name wrong - the EMC SSD was the Orion.  Introduced in 1989, this evolved into the Symmetrix in 1992.  I used one of these back at Texaco in the 1990’s.

Post from: Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Wherefore Art Thou, Solid State Disks?