Been quiet here lately, hasn't it? The early part of silence was due to the crush of holiday preparations - shopping, wrapping, visiting, cooking and eating. Once the Christmas crazies were done, it was back to fighting with the hardware, so my online time was sporadic at best.
For Christmas, I got lots of little tech toys. A couple of packs of DVD+RW discs (I have to try and use these more as some temp backup stuff), a bean bag wrist rest (works pretty well), some computer surface wipes, some cool colored thin CD jewel cases, a computer tool set, CD envelopes, and a few other odds and ends. Pretty nice haul, really.
Then it was time to install the new KVM switch from Belkin. I actually had recently just gotten one but then I found out that Belkin also had one that would share dual monitors and I wanted it badly. I also wanted to make the move to a USB KVM switch, as my fancy new G7 mouse wouldn't work with the PS/2 adapter to the KVM switch. So I bought the 4 port F1DH014U SOHO switch and gathered the courage to get it hooked up.
First things first though. One look at the absolute rats nest that was behind my computers made me think it was time to clear that out too. So I unhooked all three computers, pulled them away, and unsnarled the wires back there. It's pretty amazing just how many of them weren't even used any more! I supposed I should have taken some before and after pictures, but the after is still a work in progress and nothing to be proud of already.
I also took the chance to blow the cobwebs out of the cases. My Dell work machine especially had been giving me some problems I was hoping could be attributed to bad circulation. It was running okay, but every time I rebooted or power cycled, the machine would beep at me at first. I'd have to power it down and let it "rest" for a bit. So I used my long ago purchased can of compressed air and blew out all the dust bunnies and buttoned them back up. It seems to have done wonders for the Dell, as it is running much better now.
But the change over to the new KVM switch didn't go very smoothly. To begin with, the "Quick Installation Guide" guide and the main user manual didn't agree on how to get it installed. And neither even made that much sense, as the procedures outlined seemed to require an impossible combination of cables. One talked of rebooting a computer without a display attached and the other talked of leaving the monitors hooked up at the same time you somehow had them hooked up to the KVM switch. And in every case, the switch just insisted on beeping at me, and the keyboard wouldn't work.
I tried to use my new Natural keyboard, using some connector that seemed to allow you to connect a PS2 plug to a USB plug, but that didn't seem to work. So then I tried my new Saitek USB keyboard, and that didn't help either - still beeps. I tried all sorts of installation methods, but still just beeps. I also had a problem that the Dell machine has a dual monitor Nvidia card in it, but both connectors were DVI, so I needed two DVI->VGA adapters for that one and one for my other machine (the ATI has one VGA and one DVI), and I only had two. And the KVM cables are very strange looking. The computer side has two VGA connectors, and off one is a USB cable and off the other are two audio (mic & speaker) wires. And on the KVM side, there's a male and a female VGA connector. Not sure what happens to the audio and the usb - it must magically get transformed via the vga connectors somehow.
Which also means, I think, that all the KVM cables I have laying around, from 10 years or more of KVM use, are worthless. I have a question into Belkin tech support about whether I need the special cable for this KVM switch, but I'm pretty sure I do, which would be too bad, although the cables themselves are only US$25 or so from Provantage. I put in an order for one more today but I probably should've ordered another one too.
The KVM switch also comes with two general USB ports, for sharing other USB devices between computers, which is pretty cool and, as it turns out, a life saver. Anyway, I decided to try one more time this morning to see if I couldn't get the darned KVM switch from beeping at me. I grabbed the only other USB keyboard I have in the house (at least until my boss reminded me that the work Dell came with one that I still had in the box) - a kids keyboard. It's a pretty, tiny, yellow, and sans Window key, scroll lock and key repeat. Well, lo and behold, it stopped beeping at me! Not sure what it didn't like about the Saitek, but with the baby keyboard plugged in, I could finally try it out. And by using one of the shared USB ports, I could use the Saitek keyboard (it worked fine there).
So after I became convinced it would work (and work it did - dual monitors now on two of my machines - woo hoo!), I headed back out to the stores. There I picked up another DVI->VGA adapter (CompUSA wanted US$50 for one, so I got mine at BestBuy for a still outrageous $10), another pair of headphones (I keep breaking mine - the last pair, a wonderful Sennheiser, got the boom mic snapped off), a keyboard and a real PS/2 to USB adapter, which actually has two PS/2 plugs on one side to hook up a mouse and a keyboard. I just couldn't bring myself to splurge on Yet Another expensive keyboard (I really like the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (phew!) but it was US$65), so I got a Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 instead (US$24). That's probably a poor trade off, as I shouldn't be compromising on my keyboard, spending as much time at it that I do.
But then I found this PS/2 keyboard/mouse to USB adapter, so I picked that up too. If it actually worked, I could use my newly purchased PS/2 Natural Media Elite keyboard, even if it has that stupid F-Lock key. For those of you too young to recall that dark period in keyboard design, some brilliant mind at Microsoft decided that function keys were too passe, and that turning them into dedicated "extra keys", like Close, Redo or Spell was a good idea. And to make it even better, let's make it be the default! Idiots. So any keyboard made during this short period (I want to say 1998-2002 or so?) had the F-lock key, so you could tell it to go back to using them as good old-fashing function keys. And it's particularly annoying here, because the SOHO series of Belkin KVM switches uses a dumb "double scroll lock" keystroke to switch machines via the keyboard, and that too requires the F-lock to be set.
But it's a very comfortable keyboard despite the flaws (luckily F-lock only needs to be hit once per reboot) so I figured the adapter would be a good first try. And yup, it does seem to work fine! Although the KVM switch seems to be confused and the keyboard USB plug behaves very strangely and slowly, so I can't use it. I have the Dell plugged into it now, just to keep it from beeping, and I have the Natural plugged into one of the extra USB ports, so it's working well. As I typed this, it occurred to me that perhaps because I had that kids keyboard plugged into it and its lack of key repeat confused either the port or the switch itself? Maybe I'll have to cycle power on it and see what happens.
So I have another cable on order and I'll try to see how it works with the old machine. I'm not sure how well that machine will work without a PS/2 keyboard, as it might not be new enough to deal with a USB keyboard only. We shall see.
Added: Removing power to the KVM switch worked like a charm! I unplugged the power as well as the USB cables and let it sit for a bit. When I plugged it back in, I put the Natural+PS/2 adapter keyboard in the keyboard USB port and voila - a working keyboard! Weird how it "remembers" this sort of stuff...
No comments:
Post a Comment