40
SERVSWITCH
™
BRAND CAT5 KVM EXTENDER
7. Operation
7.1 Keyboard and Mouse Emulation
The ServSwitch™ Brand CAT5 KVM Extender uses a microprocessor to emulate
the presence of a directly connected keyboard and mouse for any 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 an Extender Unit connected.
This feature makes several other things possible:
• Your local 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 any attached PC.
• You can connect the Local Unit of one Extender system to the Remote Unit of
a different Extender system—effectively creating a KVM-switching matrix—by
swapping the systems’ interconnection cables. (If you feel that you need to do
this, please call Black Box for technical support first. Also refer to the first
Caution notice in
Section 6.3
.)
7.2 Normal Operation and Keyboard Typematic Rate
With the exception of the shared-access features of the Dual-Access and Switching
models (see
Sections 7.3.3
through
7.3.5
), the 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.
