If it helps at all, i'll weigh in with my limited experience with KVMs. At home i have 2 four port KVMs that are daisy chained. If i recall correctly, both are made by Aten. They work well with OpenBSD, Linux, and even Windows, and a key command can be used to switch either one. I think they cost around US $180 each, and i bought them about 5 or 6 years ago, probably from cyberguys.com.
I've never had any problems that i could trace to the KVMs i own beyond slight video degradation. Every KVM i've seen (which admittedly isn't very many) has this problem, though. Depending on how picky you are, it may or may not be an issue. I'm picky enough that i no longer run graphics mode through a KVM, and only use it on my servers (which don't run an X server or any other graphics mode applications). For ordinary text mode a KVM is great. If you need to run graphics through one, i'd say spend the money on high quality cables and don't run the resolution too high. At work we have a cheap 4 port KVM. I think it was made by Belkin. It was cheap, and i learned that with KVMs you get what you paid for. We no longer use it because it had problems passing the video signal and wouldn't consistently switch properly. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dan Ramaley Digital Media Library Specialist (515) 271-1934 Cowles Library 140, Drake University
