[selowitch]

I hooked up a Belkin 2-port USB KVM switch with audio to my Power Mac G4 tower so that, on occasion, I can hook my iBook up to it and easily use the monitor it shares with the tower. At first glance, these seems work great; whenever I want to, I simply attach the dangling VGA cable (to which I've attached the little white video adapter that came with my iBook) and the USB cable to the iBook, hit the switch button, and I'm go to go.

The problem is the keyboard. It has a number of performance problems. It seems to switch from CAPS LOCK to lowercase unbidden, and sometimes puts in spurious characters. It's a serious enough problem to really annoy my son when he plays games that require directional movement, and it's definitely a hindrance for me as well.

I'm going to haul my KVM switch somewhere where I can find a stupid PC to do a firmware upgrade; in the meantime, does anybody have a suggestion for a fix?

This is driving me nuts.

UPDATE: There apparently is a firmware update that from its description appears to be an attempt to resolve this issue. However, when I plugged the included serial-to-ethernet cable into the KVM unit and downloaded the software, the update refused to "take". So, onto the phone with Belkin, it looks like. Grrrrrr.

[JazzCatDRP]

I'm having some problems with the same KVM switch. How did you do a firmware update on it?

[selowitch]

Originally posted by JazzCatDRP:
I'm having some problems with the same KVM switch. How did you do a firmware update on it?

It was a real hassle. I had to haul it to my office where I had a Windows PC. I hooked the included parallel-to-Ethernet cable to the Flash port on the KVM and followed the instructions. It's tricky, because you have to download both the "Windows Firmware Update Utility" and the firmware software itself, installing the former before the latter can be used. Worst of all, it didn't work! I got a "Tramsmit Error" (misspelled). So, after all of this effort and following the instructions to the letter, the firmware update wouldn't "take".

So, now it's an issue for Belkin support. I e-mailed them but there's no response as of yet.

[Buckaroo]

I've read several other negative threads on other boards concerning Belkin KVM USB switches.

[JazzCatDRP]

Belkin's horrible...after my KVM switch kept crapping out on me more and more, and I couldn't get any sort of a response from Belkin, via any means, I've realized I'm screwed. Does anyone know of any organization I can report them to, something similar to the better business bureau?