On Wed, 1 Jun 2005, Adam Gleave wrote:
I've been looking at KVM's (on eBay mostly, for price reasons :)).
What I really need is something that:
1. Will work on a variety of OS's (Linux, OpenBSD, *BSD, ...anything).
OpenBSD being most important :)
2. Will work both graphical and console
3. Ok signal
4. 8 ports
I'm looking at two KVM's in particuluar:
1. A Belkin OmniCube 4 port F1D024. Seems fine for my usage, except
for number of ports.
2. Compaq EO1004B 8 Port Part No. 147094-001
Anyone have experience with these / any other recommendations?
Suggestions:
1. Look for full mouse/keyboard emulation on each port. When
one OS (you know which one) wedges a device or decides to reboot
or insists on using a different mode, this gives you a chance
at not having the other ports screwed up. But not a guarantee.
2. Video bandwidth/impedance matching. If you actually care
about graphics, KVM's can be very disappointing. In particular,
Belkin gear has been uniformly piss-poor in this department.
Their basic cables ring like church bells when driven at even
moderate resolutions. Alternate cables can be acquired which
clean this up (problem is generally with the cables/connectors,
less so with the box itself. If you have this problem with a
KVM that uses special cables, fixing it gets hard.
3. DDC2B compatibility. None of the manufacturers seem to say
anything about this which bugs me. It's an I2C bus so, in theory,
all the ports could be wired-or'd together. But then each OS/
driver/card would have to do the right thing with regard to
collision detection which I wouldn't trust them to do. If anyone
has anything to say on this, I'm interested.
'Professional' options: Cybex, Rose, Raritan.
Also, is there any major problem of connecting a KVM to another KVM.
That is, say connecting a Belkin omnicube to a variety of computers
and one other OmniCube KVM which is in turn connected to other
computers. That might fix my port problem, hmm.
If you want to use keyboard sequences to control switching, then,
yeah, one KVM can block another. Some work together such that
a single sequence will switch two boxes.
--
Monty Brandenberg
