2 screens one PC

[Alanmcm]

Looking advice/suggestions on switching between two screens and 2 keyboards on one pc. We have one pc in the fab with a display screen/keyboard and then outside the fab we have a screen and keyboard. We did have a rotary switch kvm thing but its just stopped working. Simple plan would be to replace this but its older than me. Any other ideas or suggestions to switch between the 2 screens without a switching box, don't mind if both screens show the same thing and can be controlled from both sides

[KenB]

Hi and welcome to ExTS - sorry for the slow response :(

 

Just a bit confused - what is a "fab" ?

 

Assuming that you have a video card that can accept 2 cables [ VGA / HDMI ? ]

[You can get a splitter if you only have one socket on the computer.]

 

Connect your main screen and keyboard as normal.

 

Connect the second screen with an extended cable.

[ I am assuming that the second monitor isn't wireless ]

 

You then need to tell Windows that you are using 2 monitors.

Right click on the Desktop > Display Settings [ Assuming Windows 10 ]

 

Once you have the two monitors set up .....

 

You can connect two keyboards to the same computer and use either.

You can get USB extension cables. [ assuming the second keyboard is USB ]

 

You can also get wireless keyboards.

Depending on the distance away from the computer this may not be an option.

 

You make no mention of a mouse for the second keyboard / screen ?

Edited November 16, 2020 by KenB

[Nomad]

This is an interesting topic. I use a Dell laptop and I want to add two more screens, it is possible to do it. I saw a product on the internet where the person just attaches two screens on the side of the main screen and connects with cables and the screen starts working, is it as simple as that.

[AWS]

Yes you can add more monitors. You should have hdmi, dvi and usb. You can connect a different monitor to each port. Windows will pick them uo when you boot. You can then configure which one is main monitor and which is slave.

[Ravenfreak]

It's pretty easy to set up dual monitors. I currently only have one monitor, but when I first got my computer and monitor, the monitor came in first so I tested it with my laptop. All I did was plug in the monitor to the HDMI port on my laptop, and Windows easily detected it just fine. I made my monitor the primary screen with the laptop screen secondary. As for Linux, well I haven't tried that out yet. You might need to do a little more work to get dual monitors to work but it shouldn't be too difficult.