In a recent Gearhead I discussed my quest to streamline my physical computer workspace which began with reducing two desks to one and then trying to use a KVM switch to reduce the number of monitors, keyboards, and mice I had. I then realized that what I needed was to share just my keyboard and mouse because have multiple monitors on my desktop would be a) convenient, b) I already have ’em so I might as well use ’em, and c) it would make my office look like mission control (that is, if a mission control ever looks like a multi-screen extravaganza inside an explosion of books, journals, products and all the other detritus that has washed up on the shores of the Gibbs Institute).
Anyway, the solution turned out to be an open source freeware product called Synergy which allows sharing of a keyboard and a mouse betwwen multiple machines running any mixture of Windows, Mac, and Unix over TCP/IP. I’ve been using synergy for a few weeks now and it works! It just works! I’m not used to software that just works.
I discovered one problem yesterday. I haven’t needed to take a screen shot for some time and I discovered that using my OS X machine as the Synergy server meant that am using a Mac keyboard. And here’s the rub: The Mac keyboard generates F13 instead of Print Screen. After a bit of searching I discovered a very useful page online: Tips for Sharing Keyboards and Monitors. Here’s the answer to my problem:
Follow these instructions In order to map the F13-F15 keys on an Apple USB keyboard to the functions, Print Screen, Scroll Lock, and Break commonly found on PC keyboards:
1. On your PC, copy the following lines into a text file.
REGEDIT4[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlKeyboard Layout]
“Scancode Map”=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,04,00,00,00,46,E0,5F,00,46,00,5E,00,37,E0,5D,00,00,00,00,00
2. Rename the text file remap.reg.
3. Double click on the file remap.reg and answer yes to the question about adding the information to the registry.
4. Reboot.
Function keys are now remapped to their PC equivalents.
Cool. So, as soon as I reboot I’ll let you know if it works …
