I’ve been able to make Vine Server and Vine Viewer work just fine - remotely, with multiple machines. However, I’ve been trying to figure out if it is possible to use these products on the same machine with multiple monitors, keyboards, and mice? I thought I’d ask here in case anyone had an idea or had already tried this. I have a G5 PowerMac, 4GB of RAM, a dual-monitor video card, and am running OS X Leopard. I’d like to have one user logged in using one monitor/display and another user logged in as a different user using a different monitor/display, keyboard, and mouse, but with the same machine. Is this possible in any way?
Thanks!
You don’t need multiple pieces of hardware, just multiple users. See http://www.testplant.com/products/vine_viewer/multidesktop
Thanks for the reply EggplantMatt, but what I am wanting to do is to specifically have 2 monitors, keyboards and mice connected to the same machine - doing the work that one would normally do with this product remotely. The software works great remotely, but I was wondering if for example, one person could be working on a machine, while the other monitor, keyboard, and mouse that were connected to the same computer would serve a different logged on user. The company I’m trying to do this for doesn’t want to have to use or purchase another computer, but they do have other resources available (keyboard, monitor, mouse).
No, there’s no way to do that (it’s actually pretty confusing to conceptualize); Apple’s implementation of the OS doesn’t allow anything like that. You can only have one logged in user on the main display – all the others are offscreen. But if your client has anything capable of running a VNC viewer (PC, Linux, iPhone, etc.), they can use that to connect to other users on the Mac and multiply its utility that way.
Alright. Thank you for your time and your replies! If nothing else, I’ve been made aware of Vine Server/Viewer, which I’ve not heard of before, and I’m very impressed with how it works.
EggPlantMatt – could you offer some additional clarification? Can you or can’t you use this product to get two or more users into a Mac machine each running concurrently under their own user accounts with Vine Viewer/Server? My proposal would be to have an iMac at desk/seat #1, and thin client (PC) at desk/seat #2. Each machine is connected to a household LAN with unique IP addresses. I understand that the person sitting at the iMac has control of the iMacs USB ports and sound. But can the two people (one at seat #1 and the other at seat #2) each work concurrently within their own window sessions on the iMac? Based on my reading and re-reading and re-reading of material on this website I understand that they can. But when I read this post I became confused. Perhaps I am confused because the original post wanted to directly attach keyboards/mice into same machine (e.g. same iMac in my case) versus two distinct IP addressable machines. It appears that most VNC viewer share the same screen. Is your unique in that it lets the second user work with the session that iMac has put “offscreen” while the first user works with the console display directly attached to the iMac?
Thanks much!
The scenario you describe will work fine. The original poster was introducing extra keyboards and such on a single machine, which isn’t going to work.