Ok, I'm just about to explode. There's a Mac mini on my desk which I use for Pro Tools editing. So far I've been running it through the analog VGA connector on my LCD. Today I bought a Belkin USB/DVI/Audio 2-port SOHO KVM to make switching easier. Hahahaha!
My existing StarTech KVM was driving me nuts because they - in their infinite wisdom - had chosen Control-Control as hot key for switching. Brilliant! Good thing I never use the Control key for anything. Ever! I had looked in the manual for the Belkin and seen that they used Scroll Lock. That I could live with. Plus it was the only game in town for DVI.
I unpack and install the bloody thing:
Issue #1: The console DVI connector is too close to the edge and consequently you can't plug a cable in. I muck around trying to find cables with smaller connectors and eventually get that working with a Dell DVI cable.
Issue #2: The power supply has an angled plug that blocks one of the available USB ports. What an awesome design!
Issue #3: The switch can supposedly handle 1600x1200 @ 60Hz which is what my display is. Flicker mania! Both the Mac and the Linux box flicker when there are dotted lines on the screen. Smashing!
Issue #4: This pizzashit is mangling the keyboard events. Instead of just being a USB switch the KVM snoops data (for hot key switching) and has a crapolariffic algorithm that decides what gets through. This means that not only do the multimedia keys stop working but other combinations of keys get completely messed up. My favorite is right control c which ends up sending c. Good thing nobody ever needs to press control c.
Issue #5: I decide that the keyboard mangling is too broken and on top of that I don't care about the hotkey switching. I can reach the buttons on the Belkin and switch manually. So I move the keyboard to the only usable (see issue #2) generic USB port. Great! The KVM immediately goes into infinite beep mode. Turns out it needs a keyboard plugged into the console port at all times.
Issue #6: Belkin's support site has a no-beep, no-keyboard version of the firmware available for download. Woohoo! Except it requires Windows 98 or 2000 to upgrade the KVM. No Windows boxes here. Dead end.
Issue #7: Fine! I plug a random USB keyboard into that port and hide it under the desk. And this solved my problems, right? Nope. Because the generic port might not snoop and mangle data but it's still flakey. I type fast and it loses keypresses all the time. Unusable.
Issue #8: But wait! There's more! Sometimes the keyboard goes into repeat-the-last-keypress-20-odd-times mode. That in combination with the delete key took care of a lot of the unanswered email I had in my inbox. Lovely!
RANT: Why on earth can't you shit-flinging monkeys design a KVM switch that's just that - a switch. Which passes the electrical signals from one port on to the other. No mangling, no hotkeys, no flicker, no bullshit. I have yet to own a KVM that passes that simple criteria.
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