quick question about wombat adb-usb..

[chelseayr]

I know I could had asked him (the wombat creator) but thought that here first might seem better for now..

I know its been mentioned that adb does not really like to hotswap even although sometimes one seem to still get away with it, but even then I just had to wonder if basically hotswapping an usb keyboard through a wombat (to adb macintosh) possibly isn't any problem as long as one remember to leave off the capslock/etc before unplugging over?

my theory was to basically have one keyboard/monitor set for between the wombat-bridged adb mac and a clamshell-ed new laptop to start with atm
(regarding the mouse, its not like having to use two would take up much any table space but I would had initially tested the behaviour of just one shared mouse first to see how the adb mac's cursor goes with this tho)

 

[jeremywork]

In my experience the only issue which semi-regularly occurs when switching via KVM (or gingerly hotswapping a cable) is the devices do not get reassigned properly by the ADB controller which results in settings like mouse tracking speed not being reapplied.

Running the bus reset command in ADB Renewer or ADB Unplugged should restore full functionality to the plugged-in devices without having to restart:

ADB Renewer - Macintosh Garden

Utility that is designed to "reset" the ADB bus if issues crop up with systems that have more than 2 ADB devices plugged in. DL #1 is v. 1.2 DL #2 is v. 2.0

macintoshgarden.org

ADB Unplugged » Frozen Heads Software

Reinitializes your ADB ports to, amongst other things, speed up hot swapped mice attached after boot time

frozenheads.com

This works for systems with onboard ADB; not sure of the implications for Wombat or iMate, etc.

 

[Phipli]

@tashtari - see this?

 

[tashtari]

I can only guess, but I'd assume swapping a peripheral on the USB side won't cause any problems. Even if the ADB side resets itself on swap (which seems unlikely), it's probably the only keyboard/mouse plugged into the system, which means the default addresses (2 for keyboard, 3 for mouse) will be where the Mac expects to find them.

 

[AndyO]

I have swapped the USB side on my Wombat a few times, before I recalled that ADB doesn't respond well to this. I didn't have a problem with anything other than that my mouse tracking reset to slow in 8.1 on my 630CD.

When I used the Wombat in the other direction on a modern iMac, and hot-swapped the ADB keyboard plugged into it, it locked up the Wombat which I then had to unplug and reconnect to USB on the iMac to get it working again. That's when I remembered ADB isn't hot-swappable anyway!

 

[chelseayr]

thanks, I'll willingly give this a try and hopefully remember to report back here about it a few weeks later or so

even if its only the mouse that turns out to be a bit of constant nitpick to me and I end up deciding to use separate individual mouses instead, that still would leave me happy re only needing to spare the space for one single [usb] full keyboard switched between the natively-usb laptop and the wombat-bridged adb mac