[plug] laptop screen/keyboard/mouse 2 control the server?

[Craig Ringer]

somewhereintime wrote:
> Yeah i know about the prices...thanks for your time....maybe i can
> convince a manufacture that they might make some money out of making
> this gadget, by proving that it saves having too cables hanging around
> the place and the prices of the kvm switches...:)

Did you see my earlier reply? If I understand you correctly, you're 
proposing a device you'd plug in to your laptop that would permit its 
keyboard, mouse, and display to be used by another host. There is no 
way, unless I'm grossly mistaken, for any "gadget" to convert your 
laptop's PS/2 inputs to operate as PS/2 devices instead. The hardware 
just isn't there. You would need built-in hardware support for the 
capability in your laptop, and I haven't heard of that in any laptop 
yet. Ditto the VGA display.

It might be possible to make a USB/FireWire/PCMCIA device that provides 
PS/2 or USB outputs and accepts VGA input. The device would use some 
drivers to read your keyboard/mouse events from your OS and use those to 
control signalling by the PS2 or USB outputs. It would probably display 
the VGA input using the OS's display drivers, much like a DVD player. 
That would be cool. I didn't think of it before sorry, perhaps because I 
had a bit of trouble understanding your post. It's possible something 
like this has been made, and it'd be worth looking for, but I wouldn't 
be getting my hopes up myself.

Is there a problem with using a serial console instead? It definitely 
qualifies on the "easy" and "simple" requirements, with the bonus of 
being cheap.

--
Craig Ringer