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KVM over ip for 486 ?

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First post, by Conz

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Hello all,

I -finally- managed to get my hands on a 486 DX2 after years of casually trying to get one but never finding one that didn't have to come from another continent.
I'm still trying to gather some periodicals for it but currently I'm trying to figure out if a KVM over IP exists that can deal with this 486 so I can remote control it when I want to use my modern pc at the same time.
The main issue is that the 486 only has 1 ps/2 port, the old one, and the mouse would have to go on the serial port.

I've also seen some other threads about KVM's but most have expired links or are for people with an insanely large collection of vintage pc's.

Does anyone have a lead on something that will work with vga / ps2 / serial and an IP terminal ?
I did see a ps2 to serial adapter somewhere so that's my 'last resort' option as the step above just not getting a remote console.
The motherboard has isa8/16 and PCI but I don't really want any add-on cards that require extra drivers which probably rules out usb interace cards ? (we only got 640k conventional memory darnit 😉 )

It's a pure DOS machine so no Win95 pnp stuff. (I don't think it has the PnP bios either)

Reply 1 of 4, by SScorpio

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Since you're going IP KMV you aren't period correct and have to deal with video encoding.

Why not just use a scaler to go from VGA to USB. Then get something like the USB4VC which lets you use modern USB devices over PS/2 and serial. That would let you use a modern IP KVM that's HDMI and USB.

Reply 2 of 4, by maxtherabbit

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post a pic of the motherboard, it might be a candidate for the ps/2 mod to add a mouse port

Reply 3 of 4, by darry

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Maybe this https://pikvm.org/
With a PS/2 to USB converter and a VGA to HDMI one.

Don't expect low enough latency to play games on this or any other IP KVM (unless explicitly advertised as low latency). These thing are typically meant for remote access to servers, not games.

Reply 4 of 4, by chinny22

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darry wrote on 2025-04-19, 06:38:

Don't expect low enough latency to play games on this or any other IP KVM (unless explicitly advertised as low latency). These thing are typically meant for remote access to servers, not games.

I came here to say the exact same thing!

If its a pure dos machine, I'd just have the Keyboard and Video attached to the KVM and use a separate serail mouse.
You'll probably find you don't use the mouse all that often anyway with even games supporting hot keys.

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