>: Too complicated?
>
>I like this idea. It will allow mechanical KVM switches to "work"
>better than they do now (which is to say, not much at all). I also
>have one KVM switch that hits the out-of-sync problem when its power
>fails. Unfortunately, it has a horrible user interface: The power
>button and the switch console buttons are next to each other.
>
>I assume that initializing the mouse is somewhat expensive and
>something that you wish to avoid?
Yes. Reset and re-initialization involves sending a series of commands
to the mouse. It will take time. In addition, after we send the reset
command to the mouse, we have to wait until it returns a status code.
Loctech's technical document states that it will be between 300 and
500 msec. But, I know, from our users' reports in the past, that some
mice take a lot longer time than this before sending the status.
Moreover, if we have a KVM between the mouse and the FreeBSD box,
there may be additional delay (I also had a report on such KVM).
So, the current psm code will wait up to 2 seconds in the worst case.
There have been some cases where I had to advise users to set longer
wait time via the kernel compile option PSM_RESETDELAY and PSM_MAXWAIT
(see the man page for psm(4)) for some mice and KVM.
While we are carrying out the reset/initialization sequence, the mouse
pointer will be frozen on the screen. The keyboard input may not
respond in a timely fasion because the PS/2 mouse and the AT keyboard
share the same I/O port. Then, I suspect our user may feel uneasy and
think the entire FreeBSD is frozen...
What do you think the average user will do in such situation? It is
quite likely that s/he will wiggle the mouse (rather frantically?) to
see if the mouse is dead, won't he? I am not sure our initialization
sequence is robust enough to not be disturbed by this.
If disable/enable sequence, which is lot simpler and takes considrably
less time, can correct the sync problem, I think it will be better.
Kazu
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