making a KVM switch without keyboard/mouse

From: Andy Fish (ajfish_at_blueyonder.co.uk)
Date: 03/19/04 

Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 18:03:07 GMT

Hi,

I have a cheap kvm switch (it's unbranded but the model number appears to be
K-14-E) which switches ps2 keyboard and mouse and d-sub video. This switches
the one of my monitors between a number of test machines.

Separately to this I have my main PC with a dedicated monitor attached to
the primary output on a dual-head video card.

So far so good, but I would like to use the monitor that's connected to the
KVM as the secondary display on the dual-head card - just running the
secondary dual head output into one of the KVM inputs (for the sake of
argument we'll say input #3). so when the KVM is switched to position 3 I
have dual head operation.

Obviously in this case the keyboard and video are connected to the PC with
the main display, and not to the KVM, and this is the problem - the KVM
switch will not recognise input #3 as active because there is no keyboard
connection, so I can't switch the KVM to position #3.

The only solution I've found is to connect the keyboard and mouse inputs for
#3 to an otherwise unised PC which I have to power on when I want to use
dual-head mode.

I was wondering whether anyone else has come up against this problem and
whether there are any easy solutions. I guess the KVM just needs to detect a
5v supply on one of the pins to decide it is connected, so maybe it is
possible to knock up something easy with a bit of soldering?

thanks for any brainwaves

Andy

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