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Tricking a KVM switch

From: James Davidheiser <>
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 14:54:43 -0400 (EDT)

After spending the last week trying to clean up the signal coming from my
800CT to the cyvisor, I gave up and went with the method Jeremy used,
which was to run the VGA thru a small KVM switch first.  This made the
signal perfect and the cy is now working great.  The only problem is, the
switch must be connected to a PS/2 keyboard to work, and I don't have a
PS/2 keyboard port on my subnotebook.  How can I trick the KVM into
thinking there is a keyboard there?  Should I be able to do it just by
applying 5v to the correct pins, or does it need actual keyboard
circuitry?  I'm getting really frustrated with not having a PS/2 port to
interface; I am very tempted to get a busport USB card just to use a
PS/2->usb converter with.  Ideally, I want to chuck this subnotebook all
together and go with PC/104 but the budget doesn't allow that at the
moment.

Also along the same lines... what other methods could I use to get a PS/2
input into this blasted thing?  I mapped out the pins on the connectors
for the laptop keyboard so I'd be able to build a chording keyboard using
the kernel hack that was posted to the list a while back, but scrapped
that idea because it was difficult to interface to the connectors.
There's a mini dock with PS/2 expansion, but it's larger than the whole
notebook.  It appears as if there is some circuitry related to the PS/2
connector on there as well so I don't think it's as easy as just finding
the right pins to wire a PS/2 connector to.  I very well may end up
stacking the whole huge dock circuit board on top of the notebook just to
get the right connectors, but what a waste of space!

James Davidheiser
Drexel University
Department of Physics

"Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he'll believe you"
"Say a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it"

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