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SERVSWITCH™ BRAND CAT5 KVM/SERIAL/AUDIO EXTENDER
7. Operation
7.1 Keyboard and Mouse Emulation
The ServSwitch™ Brand CAT5 KVM/Serial/Audio Extender uses a
microprocessor to emulate the presence of a directly connected keyboard and
mouse for the attached PC. This means that you don’t have to connect a keyboard
or mouse to the PC in order for it to boot; in fact, the PC will boot with only the
Local Unit connected.
This feature makes several other things possible:
• Your PC can operate continuously regardless of whether or not the Extender’s
Remote Unit is powered, connected, or even present.
• You can “hot-plug” or “hot-swap” the remote or local keyboard and mouse at
any time; that is, you can unplug and replug the keyboard and mouse without
disrupting the operation of the PC.
• You can connect different Local Units to different Remote Units at different
times in order to create a “switched” KVM-extension system with multiple user
stations. You can do this by moving cable between patch-panel ports or directly
between Units, although you should do this as infrequently as possible to avoid
wearing out the connectors on your cable and devices. Or you can use a CAT5
switch, but the switch must carry all eight wires (maintaining the twists between
the wire pairs) and must have enough bandwidth to support your system’s
video demands. Please call Black Box Technical Support to discuss your
application before installing such a system.
7.2 Normal Operation and Keyboard Typematic Rate
With the exception of the shared-access features of the Dual-Access model (see
Sections 7.3.3
and
7.3.4
), the KVM/Serial/Audio Extender should operate
continuously and transparently, maintaining the long-distance connection between
the local CPU or KVM switch and the remote user station or KVM switch. Note that
the remote keyboard’s typematic rate—the rate at which a held-down character will
repeat—is fixed at 30 characters per second, which is also the default typematic
value for Windows.
