First post, by 21603
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- Newbie
I have two older PC's I want to set up on a permanent basis to be used for old DOS and later Windows 95/98 games that won't work on my modern machine.
The problem I have is that to save space I want them to go through a KVM so I only need one monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
The KVM isn't really the problem the two computers are. The Windows 98 machine is a "newer" Pentium II with USB support, serial ports, and unfortunately only a single PS/2 port.
The DOS machine is a Pentium @ 200MHz, standard serial port, support for a single PS/2 port but not plugged in due to incorrect internal plug (needs five pins the one installed is a fat eight pin), and I think it has support for USB but no panel is installed and I'm not sure I have one.
To make matters worse, both machines are still using the 5-pin DIN for the keyboard.
Is it at all possible to hook these two machines up using a PS/2 KVM like the D-Link KVM 121 PS/2 model? For the DOS machine I've thought about using adapters for the mouse and keyboard to go from serial to PS/2 and 5-pin DIN to PS/2, but I'm not 100% certain that would work. Then I thought about getting two of those combo PS/2 splitter cables to hook the mouse and keyboard (I'd have to get a new PS/2 keyboard) up using the single PS/2 ports that both machines share. Then I doubted that idea because the PS/2 connector on both motherboards states mouse and nothing else. My last thought was USB legacy mode for both machines, but one is Windows 98, and would a USB KVM even recognise a USB device running in DOS through legacy mode?
I'm beginning to think that this isn't going to work out as I hoped and where I want to put them both really doesn't have the space for all the extra hardware. It's about the size of one of those cupboards people have under their staircases, maybe even a little smaller.