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CHAPTER 7: Operation
7.3 Keyboard Commands and Related Functions
This section describes KVM/Serial/Audio Extender functions that can be
controlled with commands that users can type in at the user-station keyboards, as
well as some related functions. The Extender uses either left- or right-[Ctrl] as a
“hotkey” that will trigger the Extender to expect an additional command character.
Right-[Ctrl] is the default hotkey, but you can change it to left-[Ctrl] if necessary by
moving position 2 of the Remote Unit’s internal DIP switch SW1 to ON (see
Section 5.2
).
For a quick summary of all of the Extender’s keyboard commands, see
Appendix C
.
7.3.1 R
ESETTING THE
R
EMOTE
K
EYBOARD AND
M
OUSE
When an Extender system is set to its factory defaults, or if the keyboard or mouse
attached to the Remote Unit ever malfunction, you can reinitialize the remote
station’s keyboard and mouse by typing in a reset command at the remote keyboard:
Press and release the hotkey, then press and release the up-arrow (number 8) key
on the keyboard’s numeric keypad (
not
the number 8 on the top row of the
keyboard). This command has no effect if you issue it from the local keyboard.
Note that the Extender will automatically reinitialize the keyboard and mouse
whenever you attach them. If a reset doesn’t help your remote keyboard or mouse,
try cycling power to the Remote Unit.
7.3.2 C
ORRECTING THE
PS/2 M
OUSE
I
F
I
T
G
ETS
O
UT OF
S
YNC
On rare occasions, you might notice that, instead of behaving normally, your
mouse pointer is moving and jumping erratically all over the screen (and possibly
selecting things at random). This is usually a sign that the PS/2 mouse has gotten
“out of sync” with the Extender or that the Extender has gotten out of sync with
the CPU’s PS/2 mouse port.
PS/2 mice send mouse data in 3- or 4-byte packets. As long as the CPU knows
which bytes mark the start and end of each packet—which it virtually always does as
long as the mouse is directly connected to it—it can correctly interpret the mouse
signals. But when mice are disconnected and reconnected, or when mouse signals
pass through other devices on their way to the CPU, it is sometimes possible for the
CPU or the intervening devices to lose track of where the mouse-data packets
begin and end, with the result that the cursor/pointer begins behaving bizarrely.
If this happens in some mouse extender/switch systems, the only solution is to
either kill and reload the mouse driver or reboot the PC. But the Extender has a
