[ale] OT: stupid hardware question

[Joseph A. Knapka]

Displaying my ignorance... again...

Today I got a 4-port KVM switch. It doesn't have a keyboard
emulation circuit; the instructions said, "unplug the keyboard
from your computer and plug it back in; if the machine still
responds to the keyboard then it will work with this switch."
So I did that (thinking even at the time that I'd heard
somewhere it wasn't a good idea, but what the hell, I'm
following instructions, right?) And the instant I pulled
the keyboard connector out the machine died - powered off. And
wouldn't power on again. Power supply is dead. (Amazingly enough,
the motherboard is uninjured - moved it to another case and
it booted fine.)

So is this behavior I should have expected? I'm very hesitant
to try using the KVM switch with any of my machines now,
since switching machines is the moral (and electrical)
equivalent of unplugging the keybord. Incidentally, it
was an AT keyboard connector, on an AT motherboard, if that
matters.

Thanks,

-- Joe Knapka
"You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You
 can't MOVE for remote castles!" -- Lu Tze re. Uberwald
// Linux MM Documentation in progress:
// http://home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/linux-mm/vmoutline.html
2nd Lbl A + 1 = 2nd Pause 2nd Prt GTO 2 R/S
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