Finishing the computer cabling.

A while ago, I moved my PCs out into the garage and run USB and HDMI through the wall. 

The hold up on finishing was the USB female-female keystone sockets to mount on the wall plate. 

They arrived today - and they were a disappointment. 

The first gotchya - I have a small hub - one that I've been using for 20 years, to connect my keyboard and mouse. It was flashing. Hmm. 

Keyboard itself? Fine. Mouse? Fine. Hub? Nope. Not enough power. Great. 

I moved on to the radios - starting with the G90+ Digimode 4. Direct connection. Worked fine. 

The IC706 + Digimode 4. Nope. Interestingly - turn off the radio, the COM port appeared. Turn it on, off it goes. Nope - not enough power. After removing the socket and the male-male USB cable, I used a USB extension cable. Same problem. 

At this point:

- It's probably not the socket or the USB cable fault - it's probably a simple case of USB doesn't like long cables, especially when it passes power. 

- I can't find a power supply that suits any of my USB hubs to work around it. 

Plan B:

I have some USB over CAT5 adapters I've used for various things. After 20 minutes trying to find them, they're in.. and surprisingly, they work. OK then. Moving on.

At this point I now have both radios working with PCs again, I have a wall plate on and everything looks OK. 

What I can't do however is get my KVM pass through working. I have a pair of KVMs. One is a simple 8 port that is all VGA and PS/2. The other is a 16 port that has a built in screen. 

Overkill. The KVM with the screen is handy when working the rack, but I don't necessarily need it that often. The other is useful because I can use a keyboard to change inputs. The annoyance of course is that nearly everything else now is HDMI. 

I have converters to output the VGA from the KVM to HDMI so I can pass it through to a monitor in the study. It looks pretty average, but it works.
What I can't easily convert is USB to PS/2. I have old adapters that handle older gen USB keyboards and convert to PS/2, but they're not working. I think I quite simply need to pass through PS/2 from the study direct, No additional adapting. 

It's a bit of a mess, but one day I'll get it sorted. I used to have PS/2 extension cables... used to... 

I'm not quite at the point I can put the sides back on the rack yet. I'd like to finish this bit off. I'm also waiting for another load of ferrites to arrive. All of this USB cabling needs as much help as it can get. 

Overall, I think this is a bit of a failure. Possibly with shorter cabling it might have been more reliable, but it's hard to tell. I'm at a point I'll just use whatever works and try to keep it looking tidy.