The Linux Extremist

This week, my office melted in the withering heat. On that basis, I decided not only to take my newly built custom desktop machine home, but to keep it in an air conditoned room with my other custom built desktop at least for the duration of the summer. Once there, it took about 5 minutes flat for me to be annoyed about not having a Keyboard-Video-Mouse switch to easily swap controls between the two.

My setup is fairly modern - I have a DVI monitor, and there is no way I was going to go back to VGA. My keyboard and mouse are both using USB. I also have a scanner and a webcam that I wanted to use on both machines. The problem is that there isn’t exactly a world of choice in terms of DVI / USB KVM switches.

I first took a look at a Belkin Omniview model, and then backed away when I read reviews like this -

Bad points: Doesn’t work with a lot of mondern USB keyboards Cables don’t work with DVI-D only TFT displays Firmware update program only available for Windows

General comments: Updating the firmware stops the annoying beeping if the KVM switch doesn’t recognize the USB keyboard.

Other comments were in this vein. I also looked at a model from Avocent. But the comments on this were not much more encouraging -

Bad points: Occasionally ‘misses’ a PC on boot-up, leaving the USB keyboard and mouse unresponsive - you have to either restart the unit by removing power and USB host cable, or reset the PC. This happens inexplicably, probably about once a week. All the cables you need are not included, and need to be purchased seperately.

Ouch. The only option in this case was to try and broaden my search outside of the standard stockists like Dabs and Misco. Through a company called KVM Choice, I found a little switch by a manufacturer called Aten, and bought their CS 1762 model. It was difficult to find much in the way of reviews on it, so I was taking a risk. The only thing I could say with certainty was that Aten was the Egyptian god of the sun. Was that a positive omen in summer? Who knew, it was roll the dice time.

The switch itself is nothing much to look at, but KVM switches are generally little grey boxes. I was pleased by the fact that it had all the necessary cables with the unit - something neither Belkin nor Avocent had. It also had a small USB hub in the back of the unit. Plugging in the cables was straightforward, I booted up my first computer and found no problem - there was no loss of resolution on the monitor, no change in sound, no loss of performance on the keyboard, no strange beeping, and no problems detecting all my USB devices.

It was when I booted up the second computer that I discovered a little niggle; if you press lightly on the switch for a moment, only video switches over. In order to switch full control over to the second computer, the button has to be pressed for 2 seconds. This is not a big deal, but still, an issue. Generally speaking if I’m switching it’s not for a quick glance as to what’s going on at the other machine; some people might find that useful, but not I.

Another minor niggle occured when I had the focus of the switch on a computer I was shutting down. When the unit shut down, the screen then “partially” switched back over to the other computer - I got a distorted picture from the first PC, even though I hadn’t switched over.

Another little problem which requires more testing is some level of screen flicker after a few hours of operation.

That said, overall, the Aten does the job. Even with the niggles, it is worthy of recommendation. It’s a little grey box, but a valuable and worthwhile one at that.

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