next topic »

[Reply #15 on:]

It strikes me that you can buy 50' and even 100' shielded VGA cables.

...and as I mentioned above, you can make "VGA to Cat5" adapters (see the relevant bits from the instructable here).  I've run a video signal over a 200' patch cord using a couple of homemade adapters and it was a reasonably good signal.  So long as you don't need to rout it through switching equipment this would go through wall plugs, patch panels, etc.

Actually, that's a really funny idea--I'm not actually positive how well it would work, but I suspect it would work just fine--make some HD15-to-Cat5 adapters and some USB-to-cat5 adapters (I think you could put two USB signals through one wire, but not sure of distance), and then actually use a patch panel and two Cat5 jumpers (one for video, one for keyboard/mouse) to patch your keyboard/monitor to the computer you want to control.  Et voila!

Sounds pretty low-tech and cheesy, but you know I bet it would work, and no messy conversion to IP required if your cabling situation allowed it.

[Reply #16 on:]

of course this approach would be valid only if the servers are like in another room or floor in the same building, otherwise it's not practical.
And you would have the problem how to route the signal among more than one server. Arduino could handle the PS/2 / USB part, but the video signal?

[Reply #17 on:]

Arduino could handle the PS/2 / USB part, but the video signal?

The question is are you switching the video signal using a mux with appropriate electrical characteristics?  The Arduino should be able to drive the select lines of said mux with no problems.

-j

[Reply #18 on:]

Alright, my "final" conclusion is that it would be the easiest to put video cards (or any other way) to have composite output, and then have another server, that would have input that would be used more or less as a vnc proxy i am guessing...
It would be interesting to look inside one of those "KVM2ETHERNET" switches by epiphan systems, but I haven't had that much of a luck finding pictures online :-/
Oh well, I guess I will run back and forth for a while and when I will have more servers I will make a system like I explained above.

[Reply #19 on:]

I have

Had a PowerPC CPU inside, lots of flash chips, a large array of FPGA Chips, an ethernet chip and a bunch of other stuff

IIRC the FPGAs were Xilinx

And runs Linux of course

[Reply #20 on:]

I was wrong they are Altera FPGAs

[Reply #21 on:]

Yeah... which still makes them pretty expensive... and I'm pretty sure that I'm sooo not on the level to  make my own chip.  :-/

[Reply #22 on:]

I think the Altera FPGAs sell for about $10 each if you buy 10k units

Still expensive and a dev kit is probably very expensive

Most nicer embedded PPC boards I have seen are in the $600 to $1200 range

A $20 capture card and a few cheap VGAs with TV out will be a lot less expensive than a really nice IP KVM, a high end 16port IP KVM can easily go for $5,000 or $6,000 new

Avoid the cheap 1port IP KVMs they are usually very poorly made