Good Day/Hard Night

Well, it was a good day — I got all of my Christmas shopping done (in one afternoon!) and when once I was home, my new KVM switch arrived too. Actually this is the second KVM switch in two days: I bought the IOGEAR Miniview Extreme 4-port switch from Amazon and that arrived today. IOGEAR sent me a loaner 2-port to try for an OfB review and that arrived yesterday.

I want to thank Josiah for his suggestion of a D-Link KVM, btw. I ended up with the IOGEAR only because it was USB and the D-Link was PS/2 (like my old one). It also came at a reasonable price — $158 with 4 KVM cables (which, if you've bought a KVM, you know are not cheap). It's a nice unit with lots of handy indicator lights and a built in USB hub which you can switch to the same computer you are using or switch independently. At any rate, things didn't go exactly as planned.

It wasn't much fun to install, however. Under my desk is — to put it in the best of possible terms — a messy war zone of technology. Having four computers hooked up (PowerMac, Dell desktop, Dell laptop and a “guest” system — presently the Shuttle XPC), plus all the other niceties such a printer, pda, cable modem, router, etc. leads to lots and lots of cables. Uhg! I decided to move everything out rather than just tossing the new KVM cables under there — to make everything somewhat organized.

Ha! That was 7:30 p.m. tonight. It is now 1:00 a.m. I got everything back in place and nicely bundled by 9:00 p.m. At 9:45 p.m. I realized that there was a low “beep” and static when using the KVM switch with my speakers on the G5. Hrfm. It was 10:30 when everything was completely moved out again and probably 11:15 when I realized the problem was the switch (both the 2 and 4 port versions do the same thing). The sound mysteriously disappeared when the Mac was directly connected to speakers, so I was sure it was the switch. Using a heavily shielded audio cable rather than the integrated KVM one didn't change anything.

I think it was about 12:00 when I realized the same noise could be heard when I switched to my PC desktop while the Mac was on — thus it seems that the KVM is vulnerable to sound interference and the G5 seems to be emitting a lot of it. About 12:10 I finally isolated the culprit - it's the G5's hard disk. When the hard disk spins up, noise appears on the speakers. Take that for what you will.

Overall though, besides very sore knees and back, I'm pretty happy. When the sound is at a reasonable level, you really can't hear the interference and when there is actually music playing, you can't hear it at all. If I leave my speaker volume low and turn the computer's volume up, I should be good to go.