DIY: 3 PC-USB KVM

back in the day when core2duo was the peak of computing, I was bottlenecked with one system, hence I had to configure a couple of systems to work on parallelly, having multiple systems does not represent, my level of expertise, I was just a kid who enjoyed being surrounded by them.

The trouble, I was facing when I made this was that, I was using three machines together so that means 3 keyboards and 3 mice, well 2 mice were for machines which were console-based, and I didn’t have much space on my table because of the CRT monitors(3 total), it was getting much hectic managing all the keyboards and mice.

KVM’s in the market I found were quite expensive, so the solution was simple and cheap; I took 8 small relays, cut-out of Vero board, two toggle buttons, one USB-female for wireless RF receiver of Keyboard and Mouse and 3 USB-male for 3 machines and Altoids box to fit it all in.

I powered it externally, do not use USB to from machine to power the relays, it could fry your USB controller hub in the machine. so two toggle switches meant;

00,01,11,10

The concept was really simple USB has 4 wires 2 of them are for power and 2 in the centre for data... I distributed them, on toggle the connection of wires changed from one USB-male to another .. Sharing one wireless keyboard and mouse with 3 machines.

Originally published at http://kazimurtaza.com.