Black Box KV150A-R2 manual Basic Operation

CHAPTER 8: Operation

8. Operation

8.1 Basic Operation

You can power up the computers you’ve attached to your ServSwitch Multi system one at a time or all at once. Operator intervention is not necessary during booting.

The first thing you should do after booting your system is to check the front-panel LEDs of all of your non- Hub ServSwitch Multi s, because the LEDs provide your first indication of whether all system components are installed correctly or not, as shown in Table 8-1 on the next page.

You can select a computer at the local console of a ServSwitch Multi Base Unit or MX by pressing the pushbutton corresponding to that computer’s channel on the Switch’s front panel. On the Base Unit, the channel letter will then be shown on the front-panel alphanumeric display. To select a computer channel from any console (user station) attached to a User Card, you have to either use the Card’s on-screen display (see Chapter 9) or type in a keystroke sequence from that console’s keyboard, as described in Section 8.2. The indicator lights (LEDs) on the front panel of a non-Hub ServSwitch Multi unit will change depending on which of the unit’s channels are selected. Again, refer to Table 8-1 on the next page.

Unless you use the on-screen display, in order to (a) switch channels from a console attached to a User Card or (b) use the ServSwitch Multi’s channel-scanning feature (see Section 8.6), you must first place your system in Command Mode by pressing and holding your keyboard’s [Num Lock] key, pressing and releasing the keypad [–] (minus) key, and releasing [Num Lock]. As long as you are operating in Command Mode:

•whatever you type will be intercepted by ServSwitch Multi (none of your keystrokes will be forwarded to the attached computer), and

•the Num Lock, Caps Lock, and Scroll Lock LEDs on your keyboard will blink.

You can exit Command Mode by pressing the [Enter] or [Escape] key on your keyboard. For more information about Command Mode, see Section 8.2.

The ServSwitch Multi Base Unit has an alphanumeric display on its front panel. This display reflects the active channel for the local user console. For units with an address between 1 and 9, the display will show the unit address and the channel. For units with addresses higher than 9, the display will show an asterisk (“*”) in place of a unit address. For example, if channel G in Switch 7 is the current active channel at the local console, the display would show “7G”. If channel K in Switch 12 is active, it would show “*K”.

79