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Tom's Hardware KVM Roundup
nexex writes: "Tom's Hardware has a new article with a review of several KVM switches. I have considering buying a KVM switch as I seem to collect/use more & more computers, I feel left with little choice :) While I have several friends who have taken the plunge, they have all spent wildly different amounts on them. Granted price plays a great factor on the features you get, but how do you know which one is not going to end up letting you down? If you end up with el cheapo, you will most certainly end up regretting it, as this device will be carrying the signals of your primary input and output to your systems."
If have nine machines - I have 1 spare monitor and keyboard for base boot and load. Once loaded VNC all the way - even with linux.
Nice to be able to use any machine any where in the house with touching it.
I bought a different Linksys KVM switch than the one on Tom's Hardware. I think its called the PS2KVMSK or something. It is much cheaper at about $50 dollars, including all the necessary cables. Ive found it to be a great value and is extremely convenient because it has keyboard-activated switching. The switch is signaled by two quick CTRL key presses. One thing to note though is that if you are playing games that use CTRL frequently, there seems to be a lag between the CTRL keypress and the action in the game. Other than that it performed flawlessly and was definitely worth the money.
All your computers are sense deprived...
Once in a while, an agent hijacks someone with a KVM to hack stuff inside the matrix...
This has got to stop, it is immoral!!
Here's a less expensive solution.
It can't do everything (it irks me that I can't log onto my 2K box through it), but it also doesn't limit you to a few feet away.
My personal experience is from a while ago with extremely cheap switches, but I do remember I got things like ghosted video (not always, it seemed to depend on which computer was hooked to the switch and so on). As the article says: In our testing, we found that it was more important to use good quality cables and follow the instructions in the manual to the letter. . My solution? I got rid of all the computers except one. But I doubt that would be of interest to the average slashdot reader ;-).
I've been using the IOGear 2-port KVM switch reviewed in the article for several months now, and I have to say I love it. I use it to share between XP and Linux, and neither machine has ever had a problem with the USB devices. I did run into a slight problem with the video causing snow and jitters in X11 (no problems at all in XP), but adjusting the modeline (dumped via xvidtune, changed the polarity of the hsync) made the problems disappear. For anybody who wants to get away from PS/2 systems, or uses Macs, I really do recommend IOGear.
The only thing I could wish for is the OSD/hotkey support of IOGear's 4-port model, but I can live without that. Also, Tom's price was a bit high. I bought mine for roughly $100 at a local computer store.
You can see my setup right before they laid us all off. And of course they kept the KVM and the shiny laptop... :(
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
I have five boxes at home but Terminal Service is much better than KVM, it's cheap, requires no hadware and no physical installation (I hate wires).
kawai
My experience with workstation switches from several different
manufacturers is that they are very expensive (around $1200 for a quality 8 pt switch) and that they have siginificant maintenance issues.
Where I work, we use a couple dozen switches on many, many server machines, and are RMA'ing them all the time because they simply break down quickly. Mice are the first to go. Then monitors. Maybe we're just unlucky. Personally, I feel that if a piece of hardware is dipsosable, it should be given a disposable price.
We have to have these for space reasons, however, so we keep plugging away at trying to keep them working. Recently, we've been reducing the costs associated by picking up several nice switches from dot.bomb auctions. We're getting them from anywhere between 10 and 20%. For high-maintanence hardware, this is *much* better than paying full price.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
The guys at Inova have a KVM switch not reviewed in this article. In addition, they claim that it doesn't just switch the KeyboardVideoMouse, but all your silly devices. There's a small, pleased review of it here.
bug.gd: error search engine. Humanity working together to solve all errors.
Why would there have to be ghosting at 1600x1200? Is it not possible that all those units were capable of supporting 1600x1200 and higher without any problems? I currently use one of the switches in the article, and use Cybex and Belkin switches at work all the time, and I run in 1600x1200 on nearly every machine I use. I've never had any ghosting problems from quality switches. Perhaps it could've been mentioned that there were no visual problems, but how interesting is that when that's the expected case?
I use 8-port Apex KVM switches at work, and they have some nice features; they also have a few flaws. These KVM switches arent the cheap ones found in this review, but if your looking for higher end equipment I might be able to give some useful nformation.
The switches are only KVM, no sound, no USB. To change screens, you press the print screen key. It brings up a menu, and you can choose between any of your machines. The machines can all be named, so you know exactly what machine you are going to. Another nice feature is that you can chain them together for more than just 8 machines on the switch. My only real complaint is that sometimes the menu doesnt get erased when you switch machines, so you have to bring it up again and get rid of it. I havent had any problems with screen resolutions, keyboards or mice. Definitely worth looking into for a setup with more machines than two.
I'm surprised Tom is so exciting about audio switching. Most decent speaker setups will take more than 1 input signal, so you can have both (or more) boxes hooked up to the same speaker at once all the time. It's nice to be able to play a CD or something from my other box while I'm using the first's drive.
PS: What's a formkey? I finally got one of those weird formkey errors that I've been hearing people talk about.
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
If you are interested in sharing a single set of keyboard and mouse (but not the display) between 2 computers, check out x2x.
:)
Some karma whore can post the link to it
I'm going to have to take a look at some newer 2-port KVMs. Those I've tried in the past have never lasted long -- not that they've worn out, but they've worn me out with the hassles of setup, troubleshooting, etc. I use 8-port KVMs in the server room at work and have no gripe about them, but the 2-port switches have been a different story entirely.
No Laughing Allowed!
I've been using a Belkin OmniCube 4-port kvm at my desk for almost a year now and it's been great. I think I paid about $130 for it, but I've recently seen it for nearly half that on sale at the various superstores. I have also chained an older Belkin OmniView 2-port kvm off it and it works fine.
KVMs are no longer just the domain of the NOC... for those who prefer Linux, but need a Win2k or 98 (ugh) box on demand (or anything else for that matter) a kvm can be a huge plus. It's also allowed me to save space (got rid of 2 extra monitors on my other desk).
The OmniCube has a nice shortcut... double-tap scroll-lock, then hit the number of the box I want and it comes up. This has allowed me to leave the kvm on the floor behind my desk, with all the cables.
One thing to consider... I use a high resolution and a high refresh rate on my monitor... if you want 1024x786 @75Hz or higher, you'll probably have to shell out around $25 for a high-end vga extension cable. PS/2 extensions can be had for under $5 ea, and lower-grade vga extensions are easy to find under $10. Just something to keep in mind if you are on a budget.
Only negative I've found is that I need to have the Win2k box selected while it boots, otherwise the wheel mouse isn't detected... the rest of the mouse works, just not the wheel.
Anyone know if it's possible to get my Sun Type 6 USB keyboard to work on my old intel PS2 system, through a switch? Is there a USB->PS2 converter that works with the Type 6, that I could connect on the switch output to that PC? Any ideas if I would run into problems switching between them, and losing keyboard? Same question regarding Sun's Crossbow USB mouse. I really wouldn't mind all that extra desk space.
I had a Belkin 2-port for a long time that worked nearly flawlessly. The only problem I ever had with it was switching away from an X session and then going back would cause the mouse to go haywire to the point of needing to restart X. Not sure if this was the fault of X or the KVM switch, but either way it was annoying. :-)
A few months back I was looking through uBid.com and found a 4-port KVM that had plenty of features (more than the Belkin, at least) and even included 2 free cable sets. I had never heard of the brand (Genie), but I figured at only $100, it was worth a shot to get all my machines hooked up to the KVM and thus ditch an extra monitor. And luckily enough, it has performed flawlessly. It still irks me to remember how much I paid for the original 2 port Belkin (almost $300 a couple years ago) now that this "cheapo" one is working so well, but its also good to see the good features and stability of the higher end KVMs coming to the lower end of the price range.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Better then this would be a unit that lets you plug the system(s) in to a "collector box". This would then run a single cable to a second box that would split up the signals to the original cable layout again, thus enabeling you to keep your servers where they you can't hear them, as well as letting you operate several box's from one set of keyboard, mouse and monitor.
Karma: 2.71828182846 (Mostly due to small, fun pills)
Background: Good KVM's are expensive. Cheap KVM's are awful. Many monitors now have a built-in high quality A/B switch. Many KVM users spend 95% of time on a workstation, and occasionally have to flip to a "headless" box to make a BIOS change or something.
Why not buy a cheap KVM, attach a cheap keyboard to it, and plug it into input B on the monitor? Then most of the time you have high quality video from the workstation to input A. When using the KVM, you probably don't care about quality. Of course, there is the danger of typing on the wrong keyboard.
Personally, I just use the monitor A/B both at home and at work. The B cable goes on whatever box I'm fixing/setting up at the moment. Once the box has networking, there is no need for KVM.
the only problem with KVM switches is video quality. Tomshardware testers used nice monitor, but freakin bad videocard - nVidia-based cards are famous for their low quality DAC's. They should have used Matrox (any matrox card) or ATI Radeon card - both of them have excellent DAC's.
here is my point: review is worthels in terms of video quality, you can't see anything on nVidia card.
I have an OmniCube (2-port; no USB) and I love it. Once in a while I get a blank monitor after hitting the scroll lock key twice and the up/down arrow key to switch to the other computer. I noticed my monitor (IBM P72 17") says it lost the video signal. I have to turn the monitor off and then on to make it come back.
:)
My Red Hat Linux 7.1 box is a Pentium II 300 Mhz with a Matrox G400. My gaming/Windows 98 box is a Pentium III 600 Mhz with a Leadtek GeForce2 Pro (64 MB).
Is anyone else experiencing this problem or know if this a known issue? Thanks in advance for a reply.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The review doesn't say whether the Belkin KVM (which otherwise seems really nice) takes USB mice and keyboards for input (it does generate USB mice and keyboard outputs). Does anybody know?
Why bother with expensive KVM switches? I looked in to getting on these while back when I added a 5th box. First of all, the cabling is usually not included and can cost just as much if not more than the switch itself. Anyone who has a lot of boxen lying around also tends to have a plethora of old keyboards and monitors. Even if you don't why bother with a switch when you can just SSH in or for windows use winxp remote desktop? I guess KVM switches are great in situations where space comes at a premium or you have a lot of cash burning a hole in your pocket.
4 port IOGEAR MiniView (Not the same MiniView in Tom's review) $106.95 with cables.
I've had this for over a year and I've never had a single problem with it. We struggle with the OmniView and others at work all the time, my Linux boxen always lose mice, or experience pointer wig-outs on the others, but never on the Iogear. It also has the best monitor quality I've seen so far.
Just my 2 cents...
Just because I AM paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get me.
Use VNC (free; open source; multi-platform). If you have the multiple machines networked on a resonable network (10 Mbps is fine, 100 Mbps is completly lag free -- even works OK through cable modems). Then all you need to know is the IP address of the machine, and you get an instant view of the desktop and you are able to move the mouse around, use the keyboard, etc. It's kind of like PC Anywhere, without the bloat and it's cross-platform and performs very well. If you have a DNS server, you can even assign computers a name.
No switches or cable to deal with, and best of all you can use multiple machines at the same time (e.g. at a resolution of 1600x1200 with 800x600 VNC windows), and also use your main computer. With KVM switches, you physically switch everything over, which when done many times risks damage. Not to mention all those cables going to all the different machines to do the switching.
KVM is a thing of the past, right next to the 300 baud modem rack hosting the ASCII art BBS, when you needed to view the screens of several 386's. It also doesn't make sense, to say, use a KVM switch for 10 computers. However, with VNC you have the limits (on a private network anyway) of the entire IP dotted-decimal.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
We have had very good results with Cybex KVM's. We had some trouble with the Master View KVM's - the mouse would deactivate sometimes, and was slow to 'switch' sometimes.
When purchasing a KVM watch out for the price of the cables - they can be very expensive!
Anarchists never rule
Some time ago, I was looking for a solution to a cross-platform KVM integration issue, tying some SGI gear and my PC to a single console.
My problem arose because the SGIs use a sync-on-green signal through 13w3 plugs, while PCs typically don't. I was lucky in that most SGI kit made in the mid-90s and after uses PS/2 mice and keyboards. I further complicated my situation by wanting to tie the sound from the different boxes together.
Eventually, I bought a Belkin OmniView SE 4-port PS2 KVM switch, and some adapters. To handle the sound, I bought a cheap Fostex digital mixer from musiciansfriend.com[1], wired it all up, and today, I am the proud owner of a monstrous rat's nest of cables and boxes that pipe sound from multiple machines into one set of speakers.
It would have been a hell of a lot easier and cheaper just to buy three sets of speakers. I'd be careful when evaluating a KVM+Sound switch, verifying that sound is mixed from all channels, as it is almost a necessity to be able to hear output from a non-focused computer.
As it is, I'm ecstatic about the Belkin gear. I have the OmniView SE here at home, and the OmniCube at work, and with decent cables, I can drive the monitors at 1900x1200 without any difficulty. I found this to be just about the most important piece of the kit -- with cheap cables (the kind you can buy for $10), the video starts bleeding and exhibiting static above VGA resolution. Don't waste your time with the cheap cables, spend the extra $10 or so and get the decent ones.
[1]: I am intentionally not making that a link because the bastards are almost as bad as x10 for daily emails once they have your address.
Before you yell out VNC, follow me...
Wouldn't it be nice if you had a box you could tack onto your existing system to pump the basic IO over your existing CAT-5 wiring? My ideal unit would have the following
Input jumper for power switch control
Input jumper for reset button control
Light sensor for power light
Light sensor for HDD light
Light sensor for Link light
Light sensor for Act light
Serial PS/2 port for keyboard
Serial PS/2 port for mouse
15-pin RGB port for monitor
Here's how it would work. You mount the box on the back of your server unit and connect your power and reset buttons to the unit and connect the unit to the reset/power jumpers on the motherboard. You stick the light sensors near the respective LEDs. You wire up the KVM to the unit and optionally plug the local devices into the unit.
Now, the unit is a little linux box that takes the input and sends it over the network (now we're using VNC) to my remote session. The bonus is that I can still see the unit if it's crashed (the VNC service or the whole dang box). I can boot into the BIOS and make changes. I can run utilites and so on from DOS sessions. Plus, I can click a button and reset the box, or power it down. If I connect to the session and see no image, I can see if the power light is on or if there is any hard drive/network activity.
I can think of about a billion times in my techie lifespan that I've wished for such a device. Yes, I know there devices you can use to remotely power off a computer. Yes, I know I could setup a webcam to monitor some lights. Yes, I know VNC gets me most of the way there.
But it's not cost effective to buy one of these for each server. I would rather have one box that could control 4/8/16 boxes. It's just a standard KVM with some extra inputs attached to its own dedicated Linux box!
So please, Linksys, Belkin...whoever...can't someone please build this, or show me a link to something like this?
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Oh, by the way, how about this quote from the article--"I could go into a long winded explanation of how KVM switches work, but, to be honest, I found this to be boring, and I am sure that most of you would, too, so I will spare you the explanation." If he really could do that, why can't he go into a concise but complete explanation?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I've been using a KVM for years, starting with a small cheap box that just switched the monitor signal to finally graduating to the linksys ProConnect 2-port switch.
.oops).
I don't profess to be an expert on KVM switches, but the Linksys has worked decently for me. It has this feature where it listens in on your keystrokes and switches computers at a double tap of the cntrl key. Annoyed the hell out of me in quake until I figured out what was going on (like most computer students I chucked the manual the instant it came. .
However, despite this, its VERY small, cheap (check it out here, comes with cables), and I'd buy another one in a minute.
-S
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
lessee
i know, and even forgot to add this:
the reason people ignore your trolls is because you suck at it. though i am sure you enjoyed hunting down thy gay erotica. ripping off CM does not make you witty or interesting.
cunt.
thank you very much and have a wonderful day.
One test that Tom didn't do is the Quake 3 test. I had purchased a KVM switch earlier this year and it worked ok. I decided to throw everything I could at it to try it out before I decided to keep it.
So I tried playing quake 3 on it, and the thing crawled. My usual 30-50fps from my geforce2 mx turned to about 3fps! So I packed the switch up and sent it back. Ever since that expierence I haven't been too willing to throw away more money on shipping costs to try out another KVM.
For the cost of a KVM switch, I think I'd rather just buy a $150 17" monitor, $10 keyboard, and $10 mouse. After all, that's all I'm using anyway.... no compatibility issues with that either.
Question everything that you've accepted without thinking.
Quality of cabling has as much to do with it as the switch itself. If your cabling is too thin, or too long, or both, you'll obviously get ghosting. Modern KVM switches are rated for 1920x1440 or even higher. Most can handle 1600x1200@85Hz, or even 100Hz (I run 85Hz at work, 75Hz at home) without any visual artifacts, given good-quality cabling. With my IOGear, cables were provided, and of high quality imho. With the Cybexs and Belkins I've used, I needed separate cabling, but in each case used the bundled cables suggested for use by each company. I could certainly see one having a problem if s/he went out and bought just some cheap vga extension cabling rather than spending the $30 or so on decent cables.
In the article, Tom has concentrated on go/no-go tests. ... produced a good picture " (with no mention of the resolution tested) in case of the CS-USB21H , or no mention of picture quality at all in case of the GCS124U KVM .
In a product that can influence picture quality tremendously, I would have liked to see something more than "It
It would have been really helpful to see characteristics like 'amount of reflections' or 'actual measured bandwidth'
This would have helped me more on deciding which unit is right for my purposes than describing the computer systems that were used in detail. What is the use of specifying the brand of CD-writer or the amount and brand of RAM that were used? I cannot imagine that these have any influence on the performance of the KVM switch.
Toss a USB expansion card into the intel box, pick up one of the IOGear USB switches in the review, and be done with it. PS/2 is outdated. USB is the way to go for these low-bandwidth input peripherals.
OK these 2-way system our fine and useful
for home usage. But for a real server operation
you good do with many more connections.
Our rack of 10 linux boxes is connected to
the head, by two 8-way OmniView boxes ganged
together, this system work fine, except that the
time between press the scan button of the box,
before you can press it again is a few seconds,
slightly annoying when you need to get from box-2
to box-10. A hold down repeat or numerical keypad
to select box would be nice.
What do you KVM does anyone else recommend for
heading a rack of boxes.
At home I used a Iogear $60 USB KVM that works really well for video but causes all sorts of problems with the USB keyboard setup under Linux on my Tiger 133a (There is a problem with linux on the via chipsets that cause it to not be able to use USB devices with SMP enabled)
At work we use Aten Masterview switches wich cause all sorts of problems. They meerly move the monitor, keyboard and mouse connectors through solid state switches. This is anoying because when a system reboots you get keyboard errors and things like that. (Yes, I know most BIOS's can disable these warnings.. but nto all of them =) We are slowly switching over to the Cybex A400 series KVM's. These switch boxes allow us to connect up to 48 computers into a single monitor/keyboard. (several 4 ports into a 16 port) They include on screen display and lots of other features. One really nice thing is that they only use a cat five cable between the switches and not normal keyboard/mouse/vga cables.
The major draw back to these switches is that they cost a LOT. (up to $20k for 48 systems) They do however display really well and flow the keyboard and mouse across all systems. They also can be setup to give users access to some systems but not all. So you could give your user the ability to access the workstation/test system next to the server but not the server itsself. Its really nifty =)
(And of course, this review comes our TWO days AFTER I purchase a new Belkin 4 port E-Series switch box =) The thing hasn't even gotten here yet!
I've been using a 4-port Dakota Scout for about a year now and it's been great.
I got integrated cables for it (so only 1 cable for each computer plus one for the controlling monitor + keyboard + mouse combo - five cables in all. The cables I got are specced to support 1600x1200 resolution and I've no complaints about image quality at that resolution (not on my cheapo Belinea 19" monitor anyway).
The Scout has performed flawlessly and it only cost about £100. There is an 8-port model available as well. I think there might even be a 16-port one.
I use a Dakota Scout kvm and used to have visible ghosting (bad) at 1600x1200, now with the same leads it's fine. The reason? I changed monitors- the video lead that comes out of the back of the monitor very often can't be changed so it's a good idea to try a friend's switch if you can.
BTW- avoid the old analogue type switches with rotary dials- they suck for quality and don't provide fake signals to the computers when not the currently selected one.
graspee
Test 11: We unscrewed each box and removed a
vital component, reconnected the PCs and filmed the results.
[Banner Advert for Belkin]
As you can see every for box expect the
Belkin, this resulted in the monitor exploding.
How irresponsible of the other manufacturers not
protect there products against sabotage. This
could have your childs monitor exploding. Think of
the damage the shards of glass would do to his
innocent little eyes.
[Banner Advert for Belkin]
Or x2vnc.
Then you can use a Windows/Mac box and an X11 box with the same Keyboard&Mouse at the same time.
I'm using this one when the battery of my wireless mouse on one machine has to be recharged.
apt-get install x2vnc
--- censored
is that french? what the fuck are you talking about, kazaa is only good for spyware you windows useing cunt. fucking french canadians. man you are bad at this. cunt. thank you very much and have a nice day.
I've experienced that too. (I didn't try restarting Moz though.) I run Moz 0.95, I just switched from 0.9 and before that I never had any problems.
I was even doing the "right thing" and filling in a bugreport at SourceForge. Naturally it required that I had a SF login to post the bug. And it told me that AFTER I had filled the bug out. An-noy-ing!
what kind of ./ reader would buy a 2 port kvm, limiting oneself to 2 boxes? was my thinking. folks have said almost everything about the belkin, which works great for me too. only little annoyance is that the keyboard shortcut (quick taps on scrlk + number 1-4 of computer you want to jump to) results in the number bring typed into whatever window is open on the linux box. so now an then an extra '1' throws a wrench into some code (once, an invoice, but it didn't get me any extra cash). there's probably a way to fix this but...laziness
I have a 2-port Belkin OmniCube and a 4-port Raritan SwitchMan.
The Belkin OmniCube is crappy, doesn't support high resolutions and decent refresh rates, and then it broke so that I could only get signal to one of the computers. Yay! A signal degrader instead of a KVM. The place I work at also has larger Belkin KVMs and they're not working like they're supposed to. Cheap and a waste of money.
The Raritan SwitchMan is exceptional, and works wonderfully. However, you need to use special cables as it wants Male to Male instead of the usual Male to Female. The cables aren't cheap. But I can run high resolutions at 85Hz, and there are some programmable features. You can also chain them together. The more expensive Raritan models support some even more interesting features. The only drawbacks are the somewhat more expensive price, and lack of support for Macs and USB.
I've also found that in addition to switching the keyboard, monitor, and mouse, I want to switch the audio. So, I purchased a Nady MM4 mixer from Musician's Friend (about $80 after shipping) and now I can also mix four audio sources to my Desktop Theater 5.1 sound system.
Something else I think should be mentioned is that you don't have to use KVMs (or the audio mixer) only for computers. I have my Dreamcast plugged into the Raritan KVM and Nady MM4 mixer for use with the VGA output. I plan on getting a PS2 and sending it to the same port of the KVM via a breakout box and video switcher (and my N64 at that point as well), or to a TV tuner card and then to the monitor, plus it's audio signal to the mixer.
The only thing I really want but haven't seen anywhere is the ability to use Macs and PCs alongside the gaming consoles. You can't really interchange Mac and Windows keyboards, but I'd love a KVM that I could do that with. If it could just interpret the Command/Apple key on the keyboard as the Windows key, and vice-versa, then I could put them all on one keyboard, monitor, and mouse.
I have been happily using a 4 way ATEN KVM switch for years. When I was looking it was the only 4 way at a great prices that included all the cables.
I have the CS-14
I am almost 100% happy with it. The only problem is that it seems to have some problems passing the mouse to IBM Thinkpads, and no OSD. Also the keyboard hotkeys (Shift-Alt-Control then number 1-4) is a little clumsy, and the tiny unit doesn't sit very well because it has cables coming out ever side.
Other than that I am very happy with it and would buy it again.
Michael.
The makers of my switch (ATEN) have this as one of their FAQ's on their site, but I have followed both of the recommendations and neither work.
I would really love some help here if anyone knows.
Thanks, Zilch.
I've been using Cybex stuff for a couple years now, I have one at home, one at work and 2 in my sever room. They work flawlessly and the 2 port Switchview with cables is $169.
About the Blekins, the reviewers didn't have any trouble with them and I see positive comments as here as well but IMO, they suck really bad. I had one at home that was junk. The last company I worked for had one for every developer and ended up replacing all of them, they were just terrible.
Cybex cables are proprietary and expensive, go to
www.cabletogo.com for decent replacements at nicer prices.
Needing to multiplex a console between two machines is somewhat silly. I got into KVM tech when 8-16 machines were involved. My company use Sybex 8 port units and they worked well. You could even slave the units to handle more servers. At home, I have a bunch of PCs (4-8) so I took the plunge with a 4 port OmniView unit (1998). That broke within 18 months. I then replaced it with a 4 port Linksys unit and that seems to be working very well. WinME can see my wheel mouse and linux can see that I have some kind of two button thing. No complains.
The warning about cable management should be taken to heart. I'm nearly drowning in the buggers. I suggest getting a metal rack for storing your PCs, printers, scanners, KVM unit. Use zip-ties or velcro strips to secure the cabling. It's worth the investment. When the cables were loose, my cat starting *eating* through them. That's a different rant...
As for mulitplexing sound, get an audio mixer. I have a Mackie 1402 and love it. My speakers (Labtec Edge 418) are plugged into the mixer, as are the PCs. I can even have my tape deck hanging off the mixer. This mixer/PC system has replaced my stereo.
One last point: I don't have a TV either, just a tv tuner card. Single appliance convergence? Already there!
Here at work we all have BlackBox 2 and 4 way KVM switches. They're very sturdy, and what's most important, incredibly reliable and perfectly compatible with both Windows NT/95 and Linux. I use a Logitech scroll mouse which works fine with NT, and works as a 3 button mouse under Linux, perfectly.
The only problem is, I hear that these Balckbox switches are expensive. I don't know, company paid..
Sigged!
Get x2vnc it lets you move the mouse and keyboard between monitors by moving it off the side of the screen. Works great except that the mouse wheel scrolls in the wrong direction under windoze.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Anyone else here ever booted the wrong machine cause of these things?
I was messing around on my own machine once, and it was run into a KVM, but the setup was skewed... Nothing on my screen was moving, so I figured it was stuck. So I did a keyboard reboot. Our largest client's colocation server next to me goes "...beep." Whoops.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
i've had it for years, it's fine for windows, if you have any *nix at all it sucks shit, having to unplug and replug in the keyboard every time you switch between consoles sucks, it doesn't work with my logitech trackballs (the only mouse i will ever use) at all, requiring me to have seperate ones for each of hte 3 computers using the switch.. essentially teh only thing it does well is switching video.. i can't speak for the latest model that he reviewed (and reccomended as the best one) but mine (f1d094) is a piece of shit.
VNC is fine if you need to do some remote work on an NT box that requires a GUI. Otherwise your remote needs are better served by the password-encrytped (for win2k-to-win2k connections) telnet daemon that is provided with win2k, or by installing cygwin and openssh (both free).
VNC for NT is very slow, even on switched ethernet and for security reasons I would never consider using it over the internet.
PCAnywhere is a better solution, and provides varying levels of encryption to meet your security needs. If you're running Windows crap make your boss pay for it.
None of the remote solutions is as good as having a KVM for real control of the machine regardless of the state of the network.
I have a 4 port belkin switch on mine, and my 21" Sony trinitron also has a switch on it (only for two though, and it just switches the display).
I have another 19" sitting around, but not enough space on one desk for it (need to move the printer).
The Belkin I have (OmniCube 4-Port - F1D094) is decent, but not great - I have a linux box, and two win boxen on it, soon to likely add another win system.
The main problem with the belkin, that I have, is that when you swtich to a different computer - you have to un plug and then re-plug the keyboard into the front of it. This is annoying b/c it resets any keyboard properties on that machine (so it will have slow repeat among other things) - if you don't do that, the character mappings go screwy - normal letters are all the same - but the up arrow will start putting out backslashes and that sort of thing.
This might be b/c I run at 1600x1200 on all machines, and it doesn't like that. I don't know.
Other than that, it has been great for me. It has some feature that allows you to switch computers all via the keyboard, but I never use it - and the ones at work in the server room are ultra annoying in that they are hyper sensitive to what you type - and I think it is ctrl keys that set off the menu system for it - so if you are doing copying an dpasting, then it will sometimes set it off if the copies are too close together in key time pressing.
with anything more than two computers I really don't know how people get by without the switch - of course assuming they are the only ones using them, or they are servers. obviously if multiple people are using them at the same time, then you need the monitors.
And as someone else said VNC is very good - I used to use it all the time in college. I'd go work up a scene in lightwave on the lab workstation and then rendering it out would take some time, so I'd head back to my dorm room to get other things done, or just take a nap, and then I could vnc into that machine and see what the progress was before heading back over there (although my senior year it wasn't all that far away, maybe a block).
there is also netmeeting and pcAnywhere - as well as whatever this peice of shit that is built into winxp now does - I disabled it right after install, but I suspect there will be new exploits on it much like back orifice of the past.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
The reviewed KVM switches seem to be doing too much work. Maximum video resolution? Firmware upgrade? Hah!
:)
My KV (no M, they were out of ones with mouse ports when I bought it so I have 2 mice) is an extrememly simple switch that basically looks like the printer switches you can get at Best Buy. It has 5 VGA and 5 PS/2 ports on the back (one pair goes to the monitor and keyboard, the other pairs go to computers) and a toggle switch on the front. I simply move the switch to whatever computer I want and the signals go through. I don't think I paid more than $20 for the thing, and it's been working for more than 2 years. I don't know much about the brand; I bought it at a small computer show. It says it's a QVS Heavy Duty Dataswitch. Since I've never really had any problems with the switch, I haven't cared all that much.
My biggest problem is the fact that I can't seem to find any decent video cables, so I get a subtle shadowing effect at high resolutions. It's bad at first, but I've learned to live with it. I suspect that if I got better cables, it would go away, but everywhere I look that even bothers to sell male to male video cables sells the same type of crappy looking ones that I have.
I've looked at some of the more expensive switches, and I really couldn't justify spending that much, especially when my little switch does everything I need. And having two mice really confuses other people when they try to use my computers
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
VNC is a way too slow and full of security holes. PCAnywhere is a little bit beter. But what you IDIOTS fail to understand is that remote access software is just that: REMOTE ACCESS.
If you run PC Servers in a production enviroment a KVM is essential, unless you want to waste the space to provide a seperate K, V, and M for each system.
No people, VNC is not a magical kvm that replaces the need for KVMs. Nor can it be used as one. It's more of a hack around using kvms, or for those who can't afford actual KVMs (which is not something to be sneered at - KVMs are really expensive).
1) If networking dies, VNC dies.
2) If something in the operating system goes really funky, you might not be able to VNC into it.
3) Additional system overhead.
4) If the system hard crashes, you can't see what the last error message says. Even linux and solaris boxes panic.
5) Saying that everything should be managed from a serial port is misguided. A GUI shouldn't be so dismissed, there are lots of WinNT servers out there with is mostly graphical driven, and there are X apps and the Netware console screen that you can't see through a serial port. Likewise, what about a whole bunch of workstations, probes, monitoring machines, and other commodity x86 hardware?
6) You can't see POST and OS loading messages with VNC.
VNC is okay if you don't have any cash, or perhaps in your house. It's not the greatest solution in the world, and can't replace the need for a KVM. I wouldn't advocate using it as a kvm in a machine room.
A little over a year ago I bought a Dr. Bott 2-port USB KVM from DevDepot for $139. Dr. Bott stuff is more Mac-friendly than most-- the KVM has dual video ports (i.e. Mac DB15 and PC HD15) for each position on the switch.
All cables are included with the switch, and the video cables have one end HD15 and one end DB15-- no matter how you have to hook your computers up, you can get it done by just swapping cable ends, no video adapters needed.
Contrast this with Belkin, who charges out the ass for everything, cables are extra, and sometimes requires a separate box to provide Mac connectivity, resulting in an ugly mess of tangled cables. Sure, the Belkins are electronic while the Dr. Bott is physical, but I'd rather pay less and wait a few seconds for my keyboard and mouse to be detected when I switch (and have a much neater-looking work area).
It really pisses me off to read a zillion comments from clueless fucking dweebs that have obviously never had a job that was more technical than answering the help desk phone.
I meant to add that I've got this Moniswitch2 USB setup working with a Power Mac 7600 with a USB upgrade card in it, and a home-built PC running Win2000.
The KVM also switches back and forth flawlessly when I've got my other HD module in the PC and it's running Red Hat 7.
~Philly
I got a Belkin 4-port KVM (OmniView SE 4-port) at home, so I could plug in my main desktop and my firewall (a 486), both running Linux. On those occasions where I want to seriously fiddle with my firewall rulesets, bring down networking temporarily, etc. I can just flip over to the firewall's console via the KVM. I prefer to flip to the firewall via KVM rather than having yet another window open on my desktop which has a network session to the firewall, since if I screw up and accidentally bring networking down, I'm still fine working over the KVM, but I'd be out of luck if I was ssh-ing over. (Plus ssh-ing to the 486 is slow.)
:-)
And on those rare occasions where things Just Don't Work, e.g. my home network has some trouble, which happened when one of my cables went bad once, talking to the firewall's console let me see that the firewall itself was fine, I just couldn't reach it from my desktop.
Later, I added another old PC running Windows to the KVM. Again, I don't go to it terribly often. My girlfriend sometimes wants to use Windows to view some Chinese multimedia stuff, and it's easy to just hit ScrollLock-ScrollLock-Up to switch for Windows for her to do that (she does mainly use Linux, but we don't have these applications working yet in Linux).
I really like my KVM. The main disadvantages are that it wasn't cheap (I guess a few hundred for the KVM and all the cables), and also it takes up another outlet in my UPS.
If you use the cheap cables that came with some (a Belkin in my case) of the KVM's, you get ghosting. I run my boxes at 1600x1200 and had ghosting problems until I picked up some nice shielded video cables.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I had one demo'd here at work. It was being resold by WrightLine, the rack enclosure people, but was available seperately from the manufacturer.
It was tres expensive, though -- like thousands of dollars, *but* with the client you could connect to any machine that was connected to it over a network and get hardware-level control over the machine -- BIOS screen, dos prompts, totally seperate from the OS running on the machine.
The magic was their ability to do real-time video compression of the hardwired systems displays. The client app that could connect to the switch could also resample a hi-res screen to fit a lower res screen, as well as send special keystrokes so that you could use cheapie switches daisychained off of the expensive one.
It had limitations, though -- the client software was licensed (cheap money grab attempt), and it was a bandwidth pig. The guy that demo'd it didn't think it would be practical to control a system via dual-channel ISDN and barely practical over broadband connection. And it was REALLY expensive, I seem to remember a price in the thousands for the 8 port box, cables and a 4 client license of the remote-use software.
What surprises me is how dumb the video is in even non-networked high end KVMs. Why isn't there an option to do picture-in-picture? Or tiling all connected systems on one screen? With a good hi-res display and resampling, you should be able to monitor (maybe not use 6pt windows, tho) multiple systems at one time. There's loads of video tricks that get used in even the low-end TV world that really ought to be in the KVM world.
while i am not a big fan of MS i am a comercial programer using MS technolgy. While yawl may dispise comerical companys like redhat if linux is to be taken seriously in the real world it needs to be comercialized. I personally like linux and have used it since redhat 4.2. I however still would be rluctent to recomend in a bussinuess situation and i have controll over about 6500 pcs.
[16:39:48] You have control over 6500 pcs- you must have one hell of a motherfucking kvm switch!
I used a $180 2X1 Belkin.
Manual said you shouldn't connect/disconnect it to PC/Keyboard etc. while powered. Well sh*t happens and a cable disconnection of some sort BURNT my motherboard's KEYBOARD INPUT and I had to buy a new motherboard.
Have Fun.
Has anyone had this same problem?
Recently for a client it was requested that I give him a new switch to replace his A/B monitor switch, so I went out and got a Belkin 2-port ps2, thinking that I could use a PS2 -> serial adapter for the mouse and a PS2 -> AT adapter for the keyboard. Keyboard worked fine, mouse did not. I made sure to use a mouse that worked both PS2 and serial, but no matter where I put the adapter (right next to the kvm, right next to the serial port) I couldn't get it to work!
Check in the readme how to set it up as a service.
If you do that VNC will come up before your login prompt does.
Then you can use the context menu to send a CTRL-ALT-DEL if you still have that enabled.
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
*shrug*
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
I just bought a Belkin 4-Port KVM switch a while back for $100. There is a huge, huge difference in prices between stores. My local Fry's and Micro Age carried the same one for around $270. After cruising Pricewatch I bought mine at Harmony Computers. Gotta love the Internet.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
My wife taught me a great phrase: "you don't ask, you don't get". While employed in a server environment, we were updating all the Cybex switches to the latest and greatest model. I asked if I could take one of the old ones home, the boss said "sure." I draped sixteen 10-foot cable sets over my shoulders and carried the two control boxes right on the train that very night. You just have to ignore the funny stares :)
When the company was throwing out some old Digital DECTalk hardware, they offered it to me "only if [you] can take it home tonight." I replied, "it's a good thing I drove!" I got a 5 foot rack with four 8-channel DECtalkers designed to convert serial text into speech audio out over phone lines and return DTMF keypresses back to the server over the same serial lines. I gave away 3 of the 4 talkers, kept the 5 foot rack and two serial sprayers. I thought it would be perfect for 8 channels of hardware text-to-speech in my home automation setup. (Its the same hardware used at NOAA weather radio.) Too bad the terminal server talks LAT. Linux will support it soon enough, if it doesn't already.
A friend recently went through a big cleaning in his server environment and made off with two active KVM switches. His are better because my passive ones don't support higher than 60Hz refresh. Mine are just fine for Linux consoles and VERY light duty X work.
Finally, during a really big spring cleaning, I brought home a Digiboard PC/8. I just need a reason to buy the 8-way octopus cable for it.
So for the cost of the Digi octopus cable, I can console-switch among 24 machines on 2 consoles, and hit 24 to 72 serial ports if you count those on the console-switched servers. Oh, I also have two 96GB 12-tape changers, a 48GB 6-tape HP changer, and a 40GB Exabyte Mammoth, but that's for a different "Ask Slashdot".
I have to say, there are times where I absolutely have needed KVM access to the Linux servers. I haven't setup any serial stuff yet, and my Amanda tape backup sometimes freaks out. I put SSHD as a respawn in inittab, but when a rogue app has exhausted all your memory and swap, direct console access via KVM (or I'm sure serial, too) is all you have. VNC wont do crap for you. And for hardcore firewall tweakers, we can all tell you we've locked ourselves completely out of the firewall at one time or another. I recently locked myself out of a remote box because when I upgraded SSH, I forgot to reset it to the non-standard port I listen on before I HUPped it. I loosened the firewall to listen on 22 just in case I pull that one again!
Intelligent Life on Earth
Does anybody know if there is such a thing as a DVI Switch with USB. I have a DVI Flat Panel and would absolutely love to use that with my other computers :-D
Chris
At my work, I was in charge of purchasing the KVMs to set up our lab environment. We needed 3 matrix KVMs (8 CPUs to any of two workstations) that would be chained into ports on our Rariton (which is hella expensive, but works like a peach).
I first bought the Belkin OMNIVIEW Matrix 2x8, and I have to warn everyone who's even thinking of looking that it sucks hardcore. We run an automation lab, and we simply could not have KVMs that would lose the keyboard at startup, prompting a halting error (Keyboard not found). In addition, they would occasionally lock up completely, and the only way to reset it was to unplug it. Oops, for some reason Belkin made it so even when its unplugged, it can still drain power from the boxes attached to it. So I got to unplug 8 computers (keyboard, mouse, and monitor) and plug them back in every time the damn thing locked. I hated those Belkins.
Then we said forget it, and bought 3 Avocent KVMs (I believe the model was OUTLOOK 2160ES). They were marginally more expensive, but we haven't had a single problem with them yet, and they have a really nice GUI, with a good amount of customization.
Anywho, just wanted to let all of you know that while Belkins are relatively cheap, they do NOT perform as advertised. And to anyone who asks, we returned/replaced two of the Belkins because we thought they might have been defective, and the two we got in replacement were exactly the same.
Over and out.
"What we elect to call imagination is mere combination of things not heretofore combined." - Frank Norris
I just read the Tom's review, and unrfourtunatly it is completly Microsoft WindowsX centric. Unfourtunatly, you have to be very carefull about the KVM switch one buys when running a mixed Unix & Microsoft shop. Yeah yeah... I know the article was intended to be read by the average (tom's home windows user), however... None, of the KVM switches that I have certified in my IT shop is not listed on Tom's review. This is sorta sad considerig I have always trusted Tom's revies in the past.
Back to unix, and linux.... The main problem, not mention in the review, is that when you have one box running windows, and another running x-windows, you can have the problem when swtiching from the windows box to the x-window, and having mouse issues. Now sure, this could be an issue with x-windows. However, I have found that only the good expensive KVM's get around this issue. SO I know it is not a problem with x-windows.
In my testing the #1 losser was the Belkin Omni-port units. These things will all enevitably loss the mouse on your x-windows box. These unit work really good in a microsoft Windows ONLY config.
On the other end of the spectrum is the good Outlook KVM switches. These guys tend to be a bit better for the Unix stuff but not perfect either. I will say that these switches have about 90% less problems with the mouse on x-windows machines.
In conclusion, Somebody needs to do a test like TOms, but with a mixed environment in mind....
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
ROFL, I did the same thing... tell me about it...
.9.5 (which is what I run), although ie5.5 users claim to get it too....
As I posted the comment as ac, I was a little skeptical to actually log in and post the bug report, but I did none the less. It looks like a lot of it is related to mozilla
This may be a naive question, but why do KVM switches all have limits on video resolution?
My friend bought himself a $10 el cheapo manual 4-port switch. For some reason, it won't go past 640x480. Why the hell does it care about the signal frequency?
I have the linksys switch mentioned in the review, and it works ok, except that I've had mouse issues switching between my windows and linux boxes.
I have several Dr. Bott USB KVM switches at work and have never in two years had any issues with them, working with both and 4-port in the server area and an 8-port in my office. I even have PCs running linux on the same switch with several Macs, never any problems. They are a tad pricey ($399 for the 8-port) but are worth every penny.
Hell, they even have a switch for 2 montitors on 4 computers!
People think Microsoft is the answer. Microsoft is just the question, "No" is the answer.
I'm somewhat dissapointed that Tom used Windows on *both* test boxes. I say this, because I have experienced a quirk with my Belkin F1D104 4 port KVM, switching between Win98SE and Linux.
After switching back and forth a few times, the key repeat seems to drop back to the BIOS default when in X. The only way I've found to recover from it is to restart X.
I suggest strongly for anyone searching for the el cheapo kvm to buy a linksys 4-port (or a 2-port if it fits on your needs). I've one connected to 4 machines, running win2k, linux, freebsd and openbsd and everything works fine, even under high resolutions (1280x1024 on my 17' screen doesnt show any ghosts). The device is very robust and doesn't require a power source. The only problems I've found in this device are:
1. Its design is not so smart, it occupies more space than what it would need if all the ports were put in the same side of the box
2. For a strange reason, freebsd is unable to understand wheel events that come from the kvm (linux and win2k work nicely)
3. It is not configurable (as the expensive blackbox devices), and you can't change the ctrl-alt-shit-# annoying sequence for swtiching
In general I'm delighted with the performance - double press on any Ctrl-key to switch boxes. I have had some mouse malfunctions on several flavours of L'ux. I have one Win2k box and one box which changes L'ux distros almost weekly.
I have used it with two 'ux boxes - the challenge is not to forget which box you're currently talking to - a change in screen color or desktop background is critical if major "oops" are to be avoided.
In short, KVM wonderful investment. Go for it!
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
Not trying to troll here, I just have a stupid (but serious) question:
What's the advantage of buying a switch?
Couldn't I just go out and buy 5 network cards on sale for five bucks each and put them in a spare computer? It seems to me that I'd have less flexibility with a switch than a PC w/ 5 NICs.
Obviously it would require more work on my part to set up the PC, but wouldn't it be cheaper?
(Assuming labor is free)
Switch USB is really nice. I have Printer, Scanner, Keyboard and mouse on the USB. (BTW Philips sells loudspeakers that connect to the USB)
All Works quite well with Linux Redhat 7.1. Although M$ does always reconnect the USB's, sometimes I loose this with Linux ( or should I say RedHat ?) when I switch between machines.
BTW: One feature what is missing on this cheap solution is the Keyboard enabled switch. That would be worth some extra $
We actually use a serial console system for most of the ~200 servers in our machine room (we have an actual monitor/keyboard/mouse on a little cart we wheel around for when we need it, which is rarely).
Anyway, to the point, you can make a simple little loopback plug for the keyboard and/or mouse if the system is fussy about that sort of thing.
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
I could go into a long winded explanation of how KVM switches work, but, to be honest, I found this to be boring, and I am sure that most of you would, too, so I will spare you the explanation.
More like you'll spare yourself the trouble of writing it. I'd like to know how they work. Oh well, now that my curiosity has been aroused I'll be able to kill another hour before football finding out how they work.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
This is a pretty cool case. I want it. :]
I have been used mostly Belkin KVMs since '97 in a heterogeneous environment (mix of Novell/NT/Win8x, even AIX!!!).
... however work perfectly with no problem whatsoever so far. Altho, I have to admit we reboot and abuse them less than the Belkins.
:-) Messy indeed. This is the old work place back in 98. :-) At my current work, I have them arrange in much nicer way :-)
. ht ml
I have used the 8-port, the 4-port and the newer Omni Cube with 4-port. This is mostly in a testing environment with lots and lots of rebootings and switchings.
Sometimes it is a frustrated experience when the only way to regain your mouse/keyboard attention is rebooting the server(s). This seems to be an on-going problem with Belkins. Booting NT while switching to another other system consistently causes problems, albeit with less occurrence with the newer Omni Cube but still a frustrate exp nevertheless.
Worst exp comes with mixing OSes. Not sure how the engineering works, but AIX has the least tolerant to the KVM, losing mouse activity al lthe time. Next is NT/2K and then Win9x (old models 4 and 8 port). The 8-port somehow manage much better. Eventually we had to put back the old Monitors/KB/Mouse for each of the AIX box.
The rack-mounted ones supplied with Dell
See how it was used.
http://www.geocities.com/annamite2002/KVM/index
Will put the pics of the newer place on Monday when I get to work.
Okay I assume most of you here either a) have a KVM and either like or hate it, or b) don't have a KVM but might consider buying one but don't know which to buy. I'm going to tell you what you should look for. And by the way, Tom's guide (as usual) is dreadfully incomplete.
Some switches are mechanical, and others are electronic. Most electronic ones are better because they feature some kind of "emulation", meaning that when you switch off one machien to another, the machine you switched FROM still thinks the mouse and keyboard are connected when the OS polls the ports. On mechanical KVMs, they won't see anything and will sometimes b0rk.
However, not all emulating electronic KVMs are created equal. Belkin, Aten, Linkysys... they all have the same fundamental flaw: they have only one microprocessor trying to handle the emulation requirements of all the ports on the KVM.
One of the best switches you can possibly buy is a Raritan. They have a dedicated microprocessor for each port.
I have tried using a Belkin Omnicube and an Aten Masterview with a very simple setup: one Windows XP box, and one FreeBSD or Linux box. With both switches, XP worked fine but with FreeBSD, you get (at best) errors from the kernel about how the mouse is out of sync (psmintr....). With Linux, I could only get it to work if I used a standard PS/2 Microsoft Intellimouse with the gpm and X driver settings set to "PS/2". If I wanted to use "IMPS/2", I had to kill and restart GPM every time I switched back to Linux. And neither Linux nor FreeBSD would even RECOGNIZE my Microsoft Optical Intellimouse with the USB-to-PS/2 converter on the end... although I reiterate that XP worked just fine.
Raritans, on the other hand, work flawlessly in any situation. They JUST WORK. I'm currently waiting for my new Raritan to arrive in the mail. They're slightly more expensive, but totally worth the money. And for those of you who are sysadmins for larger-scale projects, consider Raritans for those racks because they make rack-mountable KVMs with up to 12 ports... we used them at Internet2 and they work perfectly.
peace brothas.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
and heterogeneous.
Yours Truly,
Hetero Genius
the compaq remote insight board. it's pretty fucking cool.
Compaq's line of KVMs are rather nice for server managment, but come at a price. They have one that is a 2x8 KVM, aka 2 consoles and 8 ports. This is ideal for having one console in the server room, and one console in your office. And you can chain a KVM to each port, thus a total of 64 servers from one place.
Their newest idea is to use PCI cards and CAT5 to chain the systems togther. It uses the PCI power, and since the KVM is inside the server, it can save quite a bit of space and cable mess. And yes, they do pass through when the server is powered off.
I used the Autoview 200 - which you can get for 1500$ new, or sometimes around 100$ on ebay - which is how I got mine. They are soooo much better then anything I've ever seen for starters they have on screen controlls - second it simulates the ps2 ports when your away on another computer (I've had belkin kvm switches trash X because of this) - third you can do the most amazing things with it - it has a command line you can enter in commands to like output a single keyboard to ALL devices - and you can have two different consoles at the same time (displaying the same thing, or two of anything you like).
It is by far the cadilac of KVM switches - and they do make modeles like the Autoview 400 - which support Sun keyboards, and USB devices along side PS/2 or whatever just about. Also if your not interested in 8 or 16 ports you can get ones that have 2 or 4.
Not the rolls royce of brands, nothing outside of "K-V-M" is switched BUT the unit (and the cables) produced no ghosting, it works be either pressing the putton on the front of doubletapping scroll lock and then the number of the terminal to switch to. It's also not terribly expensive.
Jon - TheSpork
I decided I needed a 4 port, and decided not to go with the Belkin next up unit (for price as well as the problems with the 2 port). Browsing Fry's, I found a LinkSys 4 port self-powered (from keyboard power, and since one of my machines is never off except in a power outage, it stays on all the time) that had a good price (under or close to $200, and this was somewhere around or over a year ago) that works great.
It does have the cabling mess drawback; it's kind of flat lozenge shaped and has 2 system port sets on each side and the master ports out the back. But I haven't had any serious problems with it (any time I've gotten "no keyboard" it's been when I've switched right at the wrong moment in a boot). And it supports keyboard shortcuts to switch, so I don't even have to reach up to hit the button (maybe that's common now, but I was tired of whacking the button on the Belkin, and I'd only see this feature on "serious" kvm managers in data centers prior to getting this unit).
It's the "4 port compact KVM switch" and I'd recommend it pretty strongly.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Where I work we had a requirement to use a KVM switch with a bunch of Sun servers. IT had installed an Apex Outlook, and it just did not work. Out of 5 machines, only two would bring up a video display at all, and one on of those the top two inches of the display was line-skewed so badly it was unreadable. The vendor sent us a second Outlook, and when that wasn't any better, I did some research and we ended up ditching the Apex and buying a Rose Electronics Omniview. The build quality of the Rose system made the Apex look like shit, and, most importantly, it actually works as advertised. USB wasn't an issue for us, and we don't actually use the multi platform capability, since we only need the Suns on this switch, (to give Apex some credit, their regular switches work fine on the NT machines), but Rose claim to support it, and I'd be inclined to trust them. The Rose cabling system is a dream compared to the Outlook as well, with a single multi-tailed cable per machine with a proprietary D-25 plug at the switch and video/keyboard/mouse connectors at the other. Rose equipment is the shit. The only downside is the cost, about $1500 for a twelve-way switch, as I recall, plus $75 per CPU cable. When I consider how much of my fucking time I wasted trying to get the damned Outlook to work, though, it was well worth it to get a solution that actually functions as advertised.
Tony.
-- "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" -- Juvenal
Four ports, keyboard selection (hit scroll twice, then 1-4 to select the machine that you want,) PS-2 only, cheap, works GREAT.
I recomend it for home use when space is a concern.Straight from the End-User License Agreement
"Except as otherwise permitted by the NetMeeting, Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop features described below, you may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access, display or run other executable software residing on the Workstation Computer, nor may you permit any Device to use, access, display, or run the Product or Product's user interface, unless the Device has a separate license for the Product." (from: Microsoft Windows XP Pro EULA)
So run VNC at your own risk.
Linux at home
Currently I use the IOGEAR GCS124U - MiniView USB II - 4 Port USB KVM Switch (Hotkeys/OSD). For some reason when I'm in Mac OS 9 or KDE the scroll wheel is not detected. When I contacted IOGEAR support they told me it was a known issue that would be taken care of via a free chipset upgrade I could send the unit in for. The new chipset has been held up because of the terrorist attack and typhoons overseas. I highly recommend this unit but you may wish to check to make sure you're getting the latest revision. Strangely, Mac OS X does detect the scroll wheel just fine.
I have 2 monitors, and 2 keyboards, a 21" SGI monitor linked to an Indigo 2, and a 19" regular svga monitor linked to an athlon based machine, aswell as 13 other machines running headless. I have an amplifier with selectible inputs for the audio, the athlon runs windows and games etc, the indigo acts as a dumb terminal for all the other *IX servers, and i even have VNC installed on the windows machine.. Over 100mbit full duplex this solution works better than any of the KVM switches i`ve tried, and i can run apps from several machines simultaneously on the same screen. And incase a machine has such problems that a local monitor is required, i have a 14" vga screen lying around somewhere.
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- It works GREAT
- It included 4 sets of cables
- It was under $150 (including mail-in rebate)
BTW - I saw a post earlier about the scroll not working on someone's mouse - mine works fine.OT: I'm beginning to agree with those that say the
Stay away from it if your run Linux.
1) The keyboard switching doesn't work at all.
2) The keyboard repeat rate is LOCKED at 10.2 CPS under Linux. You cannot change the keyboard repeat rate with Linux at all.
3) The technical support people NEVER returned any of my calls of e-mails. They didn't help me at all.
Their switch is broken, and they don't give a shit that I had problems with it.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
All computers these days have audio, so why aren't they called KVMA switches? It wouldn't exactly make things more complicated.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
I use USB Macs, ADB Macs, PS/2 PCs, and USB PCs on a variety of switchboxes, and have a few suggestions of what to consider for a mixed environment.
Mac issues
The Headless Mac Problem When a Macintosh is booted without a monitor attached, it turns off its video circuitry. There is no way, as far as I know, to get it to start sending a video signal once it has turned it off. This means that if you boot a Mac attached to a KVM switch, you have to make sure that you don't switch to another machine until the Mac has gotten past the part of the startup where it looks for a monitor. The real solution is to buy a gHead adapter from Dr. Bott (about US$20). It's a small pass-through adapter that fits onto the Mac's video port and spoofs it into thinking it has an attached monitor. It works with any resolution.
USB vs. MacsBug
My machines are used for development and testing, which means that they regularly drop into the Mac debugger, MacsBug. If a USB Mac is not the active machine on the KVM switch, it decides that there is no keyboard attached and it unloads the keyboard driver. Normally, the Mac just reloads the driver when you switch back to the Mac. However, if the Mac has dropped into MacsBug, it won't reload the driver and you have no input at all. There is, as yet, no good solution to this problem. I wish someone would write a keyboard driver that would never unload.
Using ADB Macs with PS/2 Switchboxes There are ADB to PS/2 adapters. The ADB2PS/2 adapters are pricey, about US$100. I've used them with the Belkin OmniView switchboxes with no complaints.
Using USB Macs with PS/2 Switchboxes I've used a Y-mouse USB2PS/2 adapter, which costs less than US$50, with an Avocent (formerly Cybex/Apex) switchbox. It seems to work very well. It may even solve the MacsBug problem mentioned above, but I haven't tested it thouroughly.
USB KVM Switchboxes
I've used two USB KVM switches. One was from Belkin. I don't remember the model, as I never was able to get it to work and sent it back. The other is the Dr. Bott MoniswitchPro8USB. This is an 8-port USB KVM switchbox marketed by Dr. Bott, but made by the same company that makes the Jargy switch reviewed in the article. It costs US$400, but it comes with all the necessary cables. The only hidden cost are the gHead adapters mentioned above, which make it easier to deal with reboots without causing the headless mac problem. I have a mix of Mac and PCs on this switchbox and it seems to work acceptibly well. My only complaint is that there is often a bit of a lab when you switch to a machine that has not been active for a while. The lag occurs because the USB keyboard driver has to reload.
I just bough a new KVM switch for my to-be linux box - for a mere £50ish pounds sterling. Its brilliant, has almost everything i want - 2 ports, hotkeys, high quality etc. Bit of a flicker sometimes after switching but no problems.
The reason i write this is that ive been looking for a decent round up in ages, and wanted one with audio and USB. So a few weeks after ive bought, this comes out! yay! Ah well i can cope.
ps OT, but anyone else have an old HP Netserver E45 ... a few technical probs im having
I have a Linksys PS2KVM4 unit. Switches between 4 systems (video/ps2-mouse/ps2-keyboard).
It works flawlessly. Cost: US$90.
No cables included, though...
And haven't regretted it since!
I used to use one of those mechanical four port kvm switches - but after a while (a couple of years) it started to get very flakey on me, so I decided to get something a little better. I wanted an active switch, but I needed at least four ports, hopefully more - but everywhere I turned, the price was INSANE for anything over two ports...
Then I decided to try Ebay...
I ended up bidding on an ATEN CS-106 from a seller on Ebay, who had a few up for grabs as used equipment. I bid - and someone out-bid me. I was crushed, because my bid was $50.00, the person who had sniped me was $51.00. I noticed he had a zero rating, so I emailed the seller, and let him know that I was willing to pay was the winning bidder offered if he didn't come through (I had a rating of 40). The seller emailed me back, and said that he thought he had an extra, sans a power supply, and sold it to me - I sent him the money via paypal, and before he sent it, he said he found the PS and would throw it into the deal.
About a week later my KVM arrived - only a slight dent on the case gave any indication that it was used - other than that it was in perfect shape (even had the manual!). It was AT only (serial mouse, etc) - but for my needs perfect - 6 ports of perfection, for $50.00!!! I plugged it in using the cables I had already, and everything has worked great since. A simple CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-port#-RETURN to switch ports, other key combos to page through, or you can use the front panel switch. The case is built like a rock (pretty heavy steel construction).
I can only recommend this KVM - unless you have a need for a more expensive remote capable (ya know the kind, with Cat5 between the master unit and the remote), this one is it.
Oh, BTW - I should say that I got lucky - if you note from the link above, it still retails (MSRP) for $300.00, I have seen it used for about $200.00, maybe a little less. I got lucky for $50.00 - not sure how (of course, I also have this print buffer/10BaseT printer interface that normally goes for $400.00, picked it up used for $5.00 at a local electronics dump - so, maybe I have a knack for these deals...hmmm).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
/. :^( and have little time :^( so I just switch the video and shove the mac KB and mouse off to the side most of the time.
The problem with a mac is the weird keyboard (Apple Desktop Bus I think it is) and mouse interface my macs use. I can adapt the video to VGA easily with a cheap little adaptor, but the ADB to PC interface is blindingly expensive even though there are chipsets available fairly cheap.
I keep intending to build one myself from the chips, but I am way out of practice at that sort of thing
If anyone runs across a cheap solution to this problem PULEEZE post.
--Charlie
HI
Take a look at IOGEAR's KVM switches, go to www.iogear.com , They offer free cables and offer 3 years warranty on its products.
Mustan