Did I buy the right KVM?

Level1 Store KVM Helpdesk
1

I’m happy with my KVM when it’s working, but there are still a few weird behaviors. I’m not sure if they are problems with the KVM, my other equipment, or how various things are configured. I’d like to sort that out before I run out of time to return the KVM if it’s just not the right piece for me at this point.

Setup:
1.4 Display Port KVM Switch - Single Monitor - Four Computer
Monitor: Monitor LG Electronics 27GN950

Three machines connected:

  • Dell laptop: laptop NVIDIA A1000 GPU / Intel Iris Xe Graphics (Win10) - through a dell laptop dock.
  • Teredici HP ZeroClient
  • Lenovo ThinkStation (boots to Win10, Centos7, Rocky8, RHEL 9)

KM: Some old microsoft keyboard, a Logitech MX Master Mk1

The behavior I’ve seen so far:
The Windows laptop was terrible until I reset the monitor to just use native resolution. Previously it seemed to be trying to rescale and every time the KVM switched back to the laptop I was getting nasty pink/orange colored mess with horizontal interlacing. I also connected another HDMI cable from the laptop dock to another monitor input. I’m not 100% sure whether changing the monitor mode fixed this or adding the HDMI cable. When reconnecting the laptop from traveling sometimes it stops duplicating these displays and defaults to the wrong single display until I switch the monitor to the HDMI input and set the laptop back to duplicate displays.

Sometimes the scroll where on the MX Master mouse is really picky and scrolls instead of mouse-button. I don’t remember this behavior before the KVM was in place, but that could easily be age of the mouse. Could this be an HID issue with MX Mouses?

The ThinkStation switches with the KVM nicely in its windows OS, but I never get the display back when I switch with KVM in a Rocky8 session. This seems like a config problem, but I’m not sure where to start with that. I haven’t checked the centos or RHEL9 behavior. If I can’t work this out, then this is likely to be what means I need to send the KVM back. Would this be solved with an EDID KVM? I only occasionally use these machines for games, and I’ve read that the EDID KVMs don’t play nicely with vsync, etc.

Thanks for advice. I’d like the KVM to be the right piece, but I need it to play nicely with what I’ve got here.

2

L1 specifically made a KVM that is for these types of problematic inputs. This one here:

Bad news, EDID is DisplayPort 1.2 at the moment (max 4k 60hz) and you have a 4K 144Hz display : /. So even if you did use edid monitor emulation, you’d be limited to 4k 60hz with no freesync/gsync…

The product description has more information for you to read (instead of me butchering it).

3

From what I was reading, there are different types of EDID, as well, which got confusing. The teredici input and switching seems to be behaving just fine. But being limited to 60hz wouldn’t ruin my day. I don’t need 144Hz to watch Qt fail to compile all day…

It’s the local linux machine that isn’t succeeding at getting a display again after switching.

4

Would I be able to test the EDID KVM and return the non-EDID one if it solves all of my life’s problems for me?

5

Hm. We usually don’t send out products without a return happening first, I mean, otherwise how could we guarantee we’ll get it back?

You could purchase the edid feeder and see if it solves all of your problems. If not, we do have a 30-day return policy from our store.

6

Thanks! That seems sane. I’m perfectly happy to do the purchase-test.

1 Like
7

Great keep me posted :+1:

8

Do you make a displayport kvm with edid for four computers? The linked one only supports 2 computers.

9

The good news is that another niggle with the logitech master mouse seems to have gone away by moving the dongle out of the HID socket. The mouse-wheel was extra sensitive, making it difficult to accurately use the middle mouse button.

10

It looks like only the Rocky8 OS on the 4-OS workstation doesn’t correctly reconnect to the display when I switch inputs to the kvm. The windows/centos7/rhel9 OSs all behave as I’d like. On one hand, that shows (was there ever a doubt?) that the kvm is great. But if I can’t get that working, then it might be that no kvm is right for my use case here. And I’m getting close to the 30 day return window.

Do you (or any other forum readers) have advice or a guide on getting Rocky (8.x) to not lose the display like this?

11

I still don’t know what a kvm is

12

Since you reached out with problems before the 30 day mark if we have to process a return it’ll be fine.

Are you just referring to it moving windows around? Did the EDID feeder I mentioned before work?