KVM

[chris]

>Everyone wants a truck load of $ for KVM switches and I figure for the
>price it might be more fun to build one but I've been struggling to
>locate a circuit diagram. I figure they're just a fancy switch of some
>type.

I found an 8 port KVM on ebay with a BIN price of $70 and something like 
$15 shipping. It was some generic brand, but it was rack mountable and 
came will all neccessary cables. I know at the time (a few months ago 
now), the guy had a bunch of them available. They were all listed as new 
(and mine certainly showed no signs of ever having been opened before).

It has worked perfectly for me since I installed it. The only complaint I 
had about it was the size was a hair too wide for proper rack mounting. 
It fit inside standard 19" rack rails, but needed to be jammed into 
place, and then the holes to mount it to the rack didn't line up with the 
holes in the rails. Less then a milimeter off, but it was enough to keep 
the screws from going in. (I got around it by first mounting the ears, 
and then forcing the KVM into place between the ears, and then screwing 
the ears to the KVM... its in, and works fine, it just took a little 
effort)

The unit only supports PS/2 devices, however I am successfully using it 
with PS/2 -> AT keyboard adaptors on a few machines. I have no idea if 
using an auto sensing PS/2/Serial mouse and adaptors at the computer 
would work thru it or not (I've not tried to do that).

If I need another 8, I'd probably buy another one of them without 
question (it is also daisy chainable, so if I need another 8, I can tie 
them together and still use just one Key/Mouse/CRT for all 16 devices).

Alas, I don't recall the brand name, but if you can't turn it up on ebay 
just by looking at descriptions, let me know and I'll check the name on 
Tuesday when I am back in the office.

-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>