Brad Noble's FreeBSD References

Smart View KVM switch and FreeBSD

Back in March 2002 I purchaced a Smart View KVM switch. The price was right so I didn't do alot of research into what others had to report about compatability. When I tried it, I found that it worked fine with my Windows machine but the FreeBSD (4.5-STABLE) system's keyboard didn't work and the mouse wasn't detected. What was strange about this is that the BIOS worked with the keyboard just fine. After playing around with the device flags I found that the following kernel defs got around the problem:

#####
# Don't work well with Smart View KVM switch
#device         atkbd0  at atkbdc? irq 1 flags 0x1
#device         psm0    at atkbdc? irq 12
#####
# These do.  bnoble - Mon Mar 11 18:27:01 CST 2002
device          atkbd0  at atkbdc? irq 1  # assume keyboard always present
device          psm0    at atkbdc? irq 12 flags 0x0400 # don't reset mouse

This worked fine except that when I booted off a CD, the GENERIC kernel kept me from using the keyboard. What's worse, when I plugged the keyboard directly into the computer, the Smart View KVM switch assumed the system was off and wouldn't display the video. I ended up bypassing the KVM switch entirely. This is a pain once you get your cables routed neatly. Although you can boot your kernel in configure mode which would allow you to set the device flags, you still can't since the keyboard won't work.

I ended up buying an IOGEAR MiniView SE which has worked ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY with everything I've attached to it including an IBM ThinkPad docking station. It takes its power from any PS/2 port plugged into it and let's you display any port you want, with or without a keyboard. There is a socket for an external power supply but I don't need it.

URL:	http://www.ee.siue.edu/~bnoble/comp/FreeBSD/
Created by:	bnoble@siue.edu
Last update:	Wed Jul 17 20:10:17 CDT 2002