Patent ID: 7441063

Claim:
A system for connecting a console device including a keyboard, cursor control device and video monitor to a number of computers, the system comprising: a user-side circuit coupled to the console device for receiving electronic signals produced by the keyboard and cursor control device and for creating a data packet that includes the electronic signals; a central crosspoint switch, coupled to the user-side circuits, including a number of inputs and a number of outputs, the central crosspoint switch receiving the data packets from one of the inputs and routing the data packets to one or more of the outputs; a plurality of computer-side circuits coupled to the central crosspoint switch and the computers, for receiving the data packets transmitted from the central crosspoint switch and for supplying the data packets to one of the computers; a menu generating unit for generating menu data; a video signal generator for generating a first analog video signal from the menu data; an analog-to-differential converter coupled to the video signal generator for transforming the first analog video signal into a differential video signal representing the menu data; a first switching device, for selectively outputting the differential video signal representing the menu data or a real-time video signal from one of the computers to the video monitor; an analog-to-digital convener to transform a second analog video signal into video data; and a differential-to-analog converter to transform the real-time video signal into the second analog video signal.