Bigger Is Better

Once again, it has been pretty quiet around here. One reason for the time away from the keyboard is the new toy I picked up on Thursday - a 50in Sony KDS-50A2000 SXRD rear projection TV. Very tasty and the perfect way to watch yet another crushing Patriots victory over the New York Jets. This one was even more satisfying, as it came in a playoff game. The TV picture is spectacular, and I'm already addicted to hi-def TV and can barely stand regular format TV. It even has a VGA port in the back, so perhaps some day I'll carry my machine downstairs and plug it in. Would make for some mind-blowing computer gaming, I bet! The XBOX sure does look purty on it too.

I also wanted to report my extreme satisfaction with the new KVM switch. After some initial setup problems, I have it working like a champ, and three of the four computers display in glorious two monitor color. Only The Beast struggles along with a single monitor, and I've been tempted to throw in a PCI graphics card and see how that works. The switch is quite picky about how to get it initially installed and the conflicting installation docs don't help. Here's how I do it now:

1. Turn off the computer and then plug in the special KVM dual monitor cable. There are just two VGA plugs (one male, one female, so you can't get them on backwards) on the KVM side, while there are two mail VGA plugs on the computer side. One plug has a USB plug with it and the other has sound/mic plugs off it. You can plug in the sound connectors if you want, but don't plug in the USB one yet. Be sure you have a USB keyboard and mouse plugged into the appropriate USB ports on the KVM switch, though.


2. Plug a USB keyboard and mouse into the host computer. This is to make sure the computer works with the USB input, as that is what the KVM switch provides.


3. Turn on the computer and let it boot up into Windows. The KVM switch will install a bunch of USB drivers in Window a little bit later. It claims to be compatible only with Windows, but it seems to work just fine with my BSD and Linux boxes.


4. After you've booted into Windows and logged in, verify that everything is working. It might install some USB drivers for your mouse and/or keyboard, so get that done first.


5. Now plug in the USB cord from the KVM switch (attached to one of the host end VGA plugs). Windows will then madly install USB drivers. I don't know exactly what it is doing but there's a bunch.


6. Once that finishes, see if the KVM keyboard and mouse work. Then unplug the host USB keyboard and mouse and reboot. You should be good to go!

Like I said, it seems to be working like a charm. I am even able to use my Natural PS/2 keyboard via the USB adapter. I don't seem to have the ability to do the "double scroll lock" keyboard shortcut in order to swap machines, but as I found it tended to screw up the host machine anyway (the scroll lock would become engaged), I don't mind having to hit the front button to switch. I much preferred my old KVM switch's keyboard shortcut of shift-ctrl-alt and then the number. It had much less impact on the host machine than messing with the scroll lock key.

Now that I finally have it all up and running, I'm going to try installing the newly released PC-BSD 1.3 on The Beast. Be warned though - there's a serious installation bug if you have extended partitions, as it will tend to eat those partitions if you try to install into a primary partition that comes after the extended partition. Not nice! They have a fix and are working on a 1.3.1 release now. See here for more info on the problem.