Sharing peripheral hardware

[ben johnson]

I decided I want to get a mac and start playing around with it. So a mac mini would be perfect.

Anyways, this is mainly for experimenting and possibly considering switching entirely to mac.

I was wondering if there is like a "mother" switch board that I could connect my mouse, printer, monitor, speakers, keyboard, etc. to. I could flip one switch and it would all be re-routed to my windows desktop. Flip the switch again and its all re-routed to my mac mini.

Is this possible without having 6 different pieces of hardware for each thing I want to share between the desktops?

I just dont want to clutter up my work space with a bunch of shit just to experiement with the mac mini, but I also want to experiement with the mac mini with out taking 20 minutes to connect everything to it.

Thanks for your help.

 

[sonofwang]

http://www.sfcable.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=SC&Product_Code=40H1-G2

i used a product like this for a while to use the same monitor on 2 different pcs at the turn of a switch. bad side is it degrades the video quality somewhat. it worked with ps2 keyboard and mouse but you might need some kind of usb adapters for the mac mini (dont they use usb keyboard and mouse?). this is a cheap product and it wont share speakers but i think there is something in the 50$ range that does. you may be able to share a printer via a network. for me just sharing a monitor was all i needed. i got a cheap - 20$ - wireless mouse/keyboard combo that i put away when i wasnt using.

 

[Phandalyon]

What you need is a KVM switch. Are you running PS/2 or USB keyboard and mouse right now? AFAIK Mac Mini is USB only, so you would need a USB KVM switch and a USB KB and Mouse.

Something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815104319

IOGear is a pretty decent company for KVM switches. As far as the printer goes I would reccomend either sharing it over a network (not sure how that would work with a mac/PC crossover) or getting a USB switchbox:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817112201

That should take care of just about everything. You might also need to pick up a DVI to VGA adapter as the mac mini only has a DVI output.