Would a USB hub work in reverse?

Posted by Tim on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Tim
Published on 2011-12-12T19:30:17Z Indexed on 2012/10/30 23:07 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 91

Filed under:
|

Imagine for a moment with a 4 port USB hub. Normally how this would work is the hub has one plug that goes to the computer, then 4 ports that you can plug in other things to (thumb drive, keyboard, mouse etc). I am wondering if I can use it in reverse. So I would have 1 keyboard going in to the hub, and then plug in male to male usb cables from the 4 ports to 4 different PCs, my aim is that when a key is pressed on the keyboard all 4 PCs will receive it as if the keyboard were plugged in to them.

Does anyone know if this would work? And if not does anyone have any ideas how I could get the same effect?

EDIT: So I am looking for more of a KVM switch type device rather than a USB hub. However all of the KVM switches I've found use some sort of mechanism to select which computer you'll be using. (some are physical switches / buttons, others do it via software "automatically" some how)

However I need to have 1 keyboard hooked up to 2 computers and when I press a key on the keyboard I want the keypress to be sent to both computers simultaneously, not to one or the other. Does anyone know if KVMs with this feature exist?

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about usb

Related posts about keyboard