https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-eFO1Gm--U
Adapters can be absolutely fascinating when they work I find, this looks perfect for someone like me, I want to have a dual PC setup exactly like this so I can render on one machine then game while I wait for the frames to finish. My only issue is potentially dealing with monitor switching as I have two monitors currently but presumably this sort of adaptor takes care of that? Would definitely save a lot of money in the long run not having to do silly things like buy an extra monitor just to play games on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn184dc-NZ0
Answered my question about monitors, It handles HDMI as well as USBs.
Should we tell him?
(Port switches and KVMs are nothing new at all. But at this point they're just conveniences. In the bad old days you had to actively fool a machine into thinking it was still talking to a device.)
Listen, as long as I don't have to back to fiddling with jumpers again...
What I can't wait for is when they get rid of those awful 24 pin power connectors.
LOL It's never something I've considered before but thanks for the info, will check that out as well. I could even potentially just make another mid-tier machine and do things that way, depends on what happens.
A SCSI switch sounds dreadful to deal with. Never messed with one of those. I had my hands on way too many of those stupid parallel port printer switches. "Automatic" my ass.
I've had good luck with the TESmart 4-port 4k HDMI KVM switch. There are also 2-port options, and 2-port-dual-monitor options.
I've mostly stopped using the actual monitor switching though; I just use remote desktop.
I feel like the hardware option would be potentially safer, wouldn't want to expose a machine to any potential hacking because of an over-reliance on software being used on a network etc.
... a KVM is hardware.
Or are you talking about RDP? If your machine is vulnerable to RDP hacking, you've done something horribly wrong in your network setup. They're (presumably) all going to be connected to the internet through a NAT anyway, so opening a firewall exception to RDP LAN connections is really not any additional risk.
My particular setup has them all on the same 1GB wired ethernet switch; for most uses it's the same responsiveness as directly using the machine on its own physical hardware.
Well I've used a KVM switch before (briefly), there really isn't much to talk about. There's no drivers to install or anything, it's really just a fairly simple device that will work with anything, it just routes signals to one of multiple outputs that you can switch. Just make sure you buy one that has enough ports for whatever you want to do.
I had a KVM switch 20 years ago when I was a PC tech. That one had both USB and PS/2 for keyboards even. It worked great for hooking up whatever PC(s) I was working on at the time and letting them do their installing, etc.
I find it funny they call it a "game changer." KVM is old tech.
What I prefer now though? A wireless keyboard with a USB and a Bluetooth mode. I hook up the work laptop and my personal PC both to the monitor and just switch the keyboard. I used to switch the mouse too, but I ended up just getting two of them. It's way quicker. Extra bonus, these monitors are so USB feature laden it will charge my work laptop on the same cable as the video, so it's a single wire connection.