I wish I had found this board 2 weeks ago!

[trigemina]

For about a month now I have been gearing-up for triple-boxing WoW, and I wanted to share the goofy way I solved the problem of broadcasting key-strokes to multiple PCs.

When I was looking around for a solution, all I could find were references to wireless keyboards and KVM devices, like that $350 Vetra thing. Well, $350 was about 1/2 my budget, and I also wanted a solution which would allow me to continue using my Nostromo game pad.

What I ended up doing was writing a small program which translates keystrokes into GIDEI serial keyboard commands. So now I have a keyboard, my Nostromo game pad, and 3 USB to serial cables plugged into my (Ubuntu Linux) laptop. When I hit a key on the keyboard or game pad, it is sent out on all three (or a selection of) serial cables to my PCs.

I do not need special software or drivers for WinXP, because support for GIDEI serial keyboards is built into the OS. (SerialKeys, in the Accessibility options control panel.)

Since I've found this board, I see there are better ways to solve this problem... For about half of what I spent on USB to serial converters I could have picked up a copy of Multiplicity.

Still, there is one thing to be said for my solution. There is no "third party" software running on the XP PCs. Not even the Nostromo driver.

Anyway, I've had my setup working for about a week now and, as goofy as it is, I'm going to stick with it.

[Ellay]

Great story!
If you want to share your application as an open source I'd be happy to put it up for others to take a look at and download. As long as it is robust

[trigemina]

Okay, the program isn't really ready for mass consumption. There are still a few bugs to be worked out, and I should make it easier to configure. (Serial ports are compiled in.)

Still, if anyone is interested, I have posted the source on my website:

http://abstrusa.com/gideiem.html