3 pc's - 1 LCD - ideas?

A

arcturus

[H]ard|Gawd
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I'm stepping up to a 22" Chimei widescreen to replace my reliable 19" Samsung CRT. The Samsung is currently shared among 3 pc's by a Belkin analog vid KVM switch. Quality DVI KVM switches look pretty pricey so for now I think I'm going to run the Chimei in analog mode on 2 of the pc's with the Belkin, in DVI mode on the 3rd box which is the gaming machine. 2 have 6600GTs, the third a 7600GT.

Does anyone forsee problems doing this?
 
look at monoprice you have some decent hdmi switcher for not so much money, and you can all plug them via hdmi/dvi cable (same quality) :p
 
Not sure if I follow you. You suggesting something like this with a cable like that?

What about the 'K' and 'M' part of the equation?
 
arcturus said:
Not sure if I follow you. You suggesting something like this with a cable like that?

What about the 'K' and 'M' part of the equation?
Click to expand...

yes something like this, HDMI cable is exactly like DVI, except it's a new format that also allows to conduct audio signal with that same cable(but in your case it wont and that's not a problem)

K and M ?? you lost me :confused:

EDIT: OHH feel stupid right now lol... keyboard and mouse hehe.... well i have to admit i did though of that one... but there's a lot of switches that do the job only for keyboard and mouse out there.. of course you will have, with this setup) 2 switch to set every time you change pc...
 
I don't know what kind of video response you need on the other two machines, but if they are primarily used as servers and your sole purpose of switching is to check status or tweak some settings, you don't even need a keyboard or mouse, just setup up a remote desktop solution like the Windows solution or VNC. I used to do that back when I ran a separate FTP server. I found it to be a cleaner solution than a KVM box and you don't have to worry about colocating the machines withing the limits of the KVM and the cables. You can even share printers over remote desktop and reboot the machine. This won't work if you plan to play games or run video from the other boxes though.
 
That's certainly something to look at. Main rig is linux so assume there's some equiv
to remote desktop available.
 
You might also think about a monitor switch for display and using something like Synergy for mouse & keyboard. I did this for a long time across two win2k machines, it worked very well. You switch the display, then move the mouse to an edge of the screen to transfer control to the other machine (kinda like virtual desktops).
 
Brief update:

Took Cubicle's advice.

Box 1 - Kubuntu
Box 2 - WinXP
Box 3 - WinXP

I remote desktop between #'s 2 & 3, VNC from either 2 or 3 *to* 1 as Kubuntu has a vnc server by default known as 'Krfb'. With virtualization one of these days I'll prob run one under the other.
 
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