Posted by TwistyGrip on 30, 2000 at 11:59 PM:
In Reply to: Re: Why this doesn't have to be so expensive posted by Tom61 on 30, 2000 at 8:11 PM:
The video goes to pot, plus if you've got a plug-n-play video card, it will hork the whole system. A more serious problem has to do with P/S2 connectors. El-Cheapo switchboxes are just a bunch of wires muxed to a rotary switch, which means break-before-make contacting. If you unplug a P/S2 (e.g. mouse, keyboard, etc) you may have to reboot the computer for the mouse or keyboard to work again. I've seen this over and over again.
: A switch box is cheaper ($10-30) and would let you switch between multiple monitors and keyboards (which is all that gizmo you mentioned does). $200 is *way* to much, you could build a low end Celeron (~400 MHz) machine for that!
: : I stewed in my chair today... thinking about why should I buy a new computer, JUST for another arcade box. I already have a computer!
: : I found this.
: : http://www.widind.com/prices.htm
: : It's the cheapest one I could find at the time. Shoot me a message if you find one cheaper.
: : The CS-201 CONSOLE SHARING device will allow switching between one computer and two keyboards/mouse/video. For about $200, much less than a new computer.
: : The dissadvantage is, your computer has to be close to your cabinet, to link the two together into the box.
: : --Just trying to help out us poor folk.