[PLUG] video TO and keyboard/mouse FROM a laptop

Eric Wilhelm scratchcomputing at gmail.com
Wed Aug 20 22:30:42 UTC 2008


# from Robert Citek
# on Wednesday 20 August 2008 14:19:

>On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 4:02 PM, Roderick A. Anderson 
<raanders at acm.org> wrote:
>> I have several machines that run headless or connected to a KVM and
>> the colo.  I'm adding more and will be running out of ports on the
>> KVM.
>>
>> That make any sense?  Turn a laptop into a monitor, keyboard, and
>> mouse for another system.
>
>Yes, what you are asking makes perfect sense.  And I've been looking
>for something like that for years without success.

Well, a monitor, keyboard, and mouse could be plugged and unplugged from 
any system you want.  With the addition of some tape and possibly 
hinges they could even be made to resemble a laptop.

But it doesn't make much sense in the context of running out of ports on 
the kvm.  If you just want to graphically interface to them, but don't 
have anything to plug them into, you have to run a vnc server on the 
headless machine, which makes any sort of low-level task far too 
interesting because losing network or whatever means your vnc 
connection goes poof.

So, to get to the low-level functionality via the network as if you were 
sitting at the machine, you need some pricey hardware which is itself 
essentially a networked computer:

  http://www.realweasel.com/

There might be some other gizmos which you can plug into the K,V, and M 
ports but by the time you get a few of those, one of those fancy +8-way 
networked KVM gizmos starts to sound like a good deal.

>Is there any kind of an adapter to let me use a laptop as the video, 
>keyboard and mouse for another computer.  I've seen mention of network 
>based KVM switches but would only need/want to connect to one system at 
>a time.

Oh, just once?  Seems like there should be enough wires on the parallel 
port to pull that off in software, but perhaps a bit of a chip and usb 
would cleaner (and you might need enough active circuitry that any sort 
of software touching the vga and PS/2 pins directly would just make a 
mess of it all anyway.)

But I would think using one of your existing kvm's cables as a rogue 
would be the way to go if you can actually be bothered to mess with all 
of the business of dragging wires around inside the cabinet while being 
careful not to snap off an ethernet connector on any of the production 
servers.

--Eric
-- 
The only thing that could save UNIX at this late date would be a new $30
shareware version that runs on an unexpanded Commodore 64.
--Don Lancaster (1991)
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