On 2007-07-18 17:48, Jim Thompson wrote:
On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:17:58 -0500, Ben Jackson wrote:

On 2007-07-18, Jim Thompson wrote:
I want to switch a _USB_ mouse between multiple PC's.

Anyone know any tricks to fake out the unconnected PC's so they think
the mouse is there, but not sending data.
USB is all mastered by the host. The host (or both, in this case)
constantly interrogate the mouse to give it a chance to send back
movement info. You could try just switching in the right sense resistors
to claim the device is present, but when it stops responding things will
probably go badly.

Have you considered something like this:

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

Interesting, might be worth hacking a KVM to switch based on running
off the screen edge with the mouse.

The next step is to dispense with the KVM switch altogether and run one
of the variants of VNC. I use TightVNC but don't remember why I chose it
(Now where DID I put those old brain cells?).

http://www.tightvnc.com/intro.html

You use one machine as the "master" and connect your mouse, keyboard and
display to it and on the "slave" machines you run a VNC server. On the
master you run a "viewer" session for each slave you want to control and
then switch between them like any other Windows app. Be sure to use the
DFMirage mirror driver on the slaves.

This is a very viable solution as long as your network is fast and there
aren't too many screen updates happening on the slaves. Since you
already have a KVM, you can leave it in place and only switch it when
the bandwidth hit would be too high.
--
Tim Hubberstey, P.Eng. . . . . . Hardware/Software Consulting Engineer
Marmot Engineering . . . . . . . VHDL, ASICs, FPGAs, embedded systems
Vancouver, BC, Canada . . . . . . . . . . . http://www.marmot-eng.com