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SERVSWITCH™ BRAND CAT5 KVM/SERIAL/AUDIO EXTENDER
5.2 Setting the DIP Switch: Keyboard-Command Hotkey
You’ll also find a four-position DIP switch labeled SW1 on the main circuit board
inside the KVM/Serial/Audio Extender’s Remote Unit (see Figure 5-1 on the
previous page). (For directions on opening and closing the Remote Unit’s case,
including the static-electricity precautions you should take, see the start of
Chapter 5
.)
Only position 2 of this DIP switch is meaningful; don’t change the settings of any
of the other switch positions. (Position 2 is the second one from the top, or second
from the left if you hold the Remote Unit by its left end.) It controls the Extender’s
keyboard-command hotkey (see
Section 7.3
), the character that you can send from
either attached keyboard to cue the Extender to expect to receive a command.
Each time you press the hotkey, it will be absorbed by the Extender if it’s followed
by a valid command character.
The hotkey can be either left-[Ctrl] or right-[Ctrl]. In position 2’s factory-default
OFF setting, right-[Ctrl] is the hotkey. But you might want to use left-[Ctrl] instead,
particularly if (a) a KVM switch you’ll be attaching uses right-[Ctrl] as
its
command
hotkey, or (b) a computer you’ll be attaching to the Extender is a workstation such
as a Compaq
®
Alpha
®
, HP
®
, etc. (Instead of a standard right-[Ctrl] key, these
workstations’ keyboards have a [Compose] key, which shouldn’t be absorbed by
the Extender because it’s required for use with some of the software written for
these workstations.) To have the Extender use left-[Ctrl] for its hotkey, move
position 2 to ON. (If neither right- nor left-[Ctrl] are suitable for this purpose in
your application, please call Black Box Technical Support.)
5.3 Setting the Microphone-Amplification Jumper (Not Normally Necessary)
All sound cards that we have tested so far are able to amplify the incoming signal
from a microphone—the card should be set to amplify the signal by +20 dB. If the
sound card of the computer you’ll be attaching can do this, or if the microphone
itself has on-board amplification, you can skip ahead to
Chapter 6
.
However, if you’ll be attaching both (a) a microphone that can’t amplify itself
and (b) a sound card or audio device that can’t amplify the microphone’s signal,
you’ll have to set the KVM/Serial/Audio Extender to do the amplification by
installing a jumper on the jumper posts labeled “MIC” mounted on the audio
daughterboard inside the Remote Unit (see Figure 5-1 on the previous page). (For
directions on opening and closing the Remote Unit’s case, including the static-
electricity precautions you should take, see the start of
Chapter 5
. For microphone-
installation directions, see
Section 6.2.1
.) Once you install a jumper on these
jumper posts, the Extender will amplify the incoming microphone signal by
+17 dB.
