Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Gonna Throw This Thing Out the Window

My desk was a complete mess of cables hooking up my laptop and 3 PCs that I have on my floor. I was using a Belkin 4-port KVM switch that was probably bought in 2000 to switch between all the garbage in my office. So, today, with it being the day before a 4-day break, I figured it would be a good day to try to clean up this conglomeration of crap. So, I identified the two PCs that I could live without and chucked them...

And, well, I didn't need that 4-port switch anymore -- besides, it was a manual switch before keyboard shortcuts so I broke out a Linksys 2-port switch that I could switch using the Scroll Lock. It also had all the extension cables built-in so that would eliminate all the extra VGA and PS/2 extension cables I had running from the old switch.

So, I hook up the Linksys and everything seems to be working pretty well...except I noticed that I had to click things 2 or 3 times on my laptop for it to actually take. So, I thought, well, maybe it's the USB mouse that is being converted to PS/2 to work with the switch...so, I found an old PS/2 mouse and hooked it up. I got nothing on either computer. So, I plugged the mouse directly into the PC and it worked. So, I thought maybe I needed to reboot.

Anyway, long story short, I rebooted both...neither had the mouse working. Went back to the USB mouse, didn't work either. So, now I have a mouse hooked directly to the laptop and another to the PC and I'm using the KVM switch just for keyboard and monitor. I'm not very pleased. And there's no way I'm going through the hassle of setting that 4-port back up. So, I ordered a new KVM switch but I have no idea why this one worked and stopped. I'm very frustrated and I may just throw the whole mess out the window.

Anyway, that's been my morning...1-hour of that stuff. If I don't update again, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

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