[PLUG] Hardware recommendations: KVM switch

Joseph Carter tjcarter at spiritsubstance.com
Thu Jun 30 21:28:52 UTC 2022


I agree they're annoying, frustrating, irritating, and just plain obnoxious.

But if you need one, there just isn't a substitute. There's two … three … serious problems I've had with them, in general:

1. It's astonishing that a brand new USB-C KVM switch knows what a windows key is, since they all seem to be built with otherwise 101 key PC-AT/PS2 keyboards and never tested (and definitely never working with) absolutely anything else. No matter what. I don't care what they claim on the package, if your keyboard cost more than $3 it's probably not supported. (Do I sound like I have opinions about this for some reason?)

2. Randomly disconnecting video and input devices from X.org seems to send it into a permanent DPMS power saving mode from which it refuses to wake up. Your computer appears to be not connected. You can change VTs … but you can't wake up the session you've got. (If someone knows how to fix this, do please let me know.) It happens with Intel, AMD, and OMG don't even try to use a KVM with Nvidia on Linux.

3. They just seem to suddenly stop working, randomly. Sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. Maybe it's overheated. Maybe it's frozen. Maybe it's cosmic rays. Maybe it just doesn't feel like working today. Maybe you didn't spend enough on the thing, although spending $100 or $900 doesn't seem to actually make much difference for most of these problems.

When you need a physical screen, keyboard, and mouse on more than one machine in the same small location … there just isn't any other good way to do it. If not for the above issues, it doesn't matter if the thing emulates EDID or not, it doesn't matter if the USB devices physically disconnect/reconnect on device switching, whatever, it doesn't matter, I'd deal with it. But I literally just bought a new one that explicitly claimed to work with keyboards that have enhanced features like NKRO and more keys. It doesn't. 🤪

Joseph

On Thu, Jun 30, 2022, at 07:48, Rich Shepard wrote:
> I want to purchase a KVM switch that allows me to switch an HP Compaq
> LA1951g monitor between two desktop workstations. One workstation has a
> Radeon Pro WX 4100 video card with 4 mini-displayports, the other has a
> Radeon Pro WX 2100 video card with 2 mini-displayports and 1 displayport.
>
> My web searches find KVM switches for 2 or 3 monitors and a couple of hits
> for 1 monitor/2 computers (the latter presents Newegg and Amazon), but the
> descriptions all say 'dual monitors.'
>
> Not being a hardware guy I need recommendations for a KVM switch that would
> allow me to use one USB/DIN keyboard and trackball and the 1280x1024 monitor
> with two desktop workstations which have mini-display ports in common. (I
> assume there are mini-displayport to displayport adapters, and vice versa.)
>
> Rich



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