I have 3 mac minis set up for various uses and would like to share one monitor due to space. Each has it's own mouse and keyboard. Any ideas. I've looked at KVM switches. Is there anything that would only switch the Video?
A 3-port HDMI video switch should do the trick. Here is one example from Eaton Tripp Lite. This model includes a remote control.
Check the specs carefully of whatever device you choose to make sure the switch is compatible with all three of your minis as well as the display.
tvrrproto48 wrote:
I've read that ssd have so many read/write cycles before they quit running.
Technically correct but the endurance is counted in hundreds of terabytes. And the larger the SSD the higher the endurance.
I don't know what NAND chips Apple uses for storage on its logic boards but I've never seen them fail. The SSDs that I use are Samsung 870 EVO's; not one has failed. Even my tiny, portable 1TB Seagate Barracuda Fast SSD with 5 years of daily use is still going strong.
All I know is I've had Seagate and Maxtor hdd fail before switching to WD. I have a WD hdd from 2010 I store photos on. I decided to jump into ssd's and have 3 WD's 1T, 3T and 4T. The 1T ssd was used with Linux Mint OS and two of my WD hdd's used as storage. The 1T became unstable and quit. Went into bios and it couldn't find the drive. After I got the mini I hooked the drive up and macos does not see it. I installed Disk Dr and it sees it and recovered the files. So that has been my experience thus far. I have all my backups on the 3T and 4T I keep in my safe. I just hope one day they don't flake out. And I have read the larger the drive the more stable it is.
Thanks everyone. I'm going to give the Screen Sharing a try and I have ordered the HDMI dummy plugs. And as luck would have it I came across a MSI G242L gaming monitor. Walmart rolled back the price to $79.99. It's 3/4 inch wider but I'll just remove one of the skinny drawers along the left top so life is good. It's got 1 hdmi 1.4 and 1 display port 1.2. Don't know if they are switched, couldn't find much on MSI's site.
if you wish read up on the TRIM link I posted it describe that while SSD /flash in general has a limited amount of write before cells die then TRIM mean writes will be so few, as it just reuse the 1's and 0's in other cells.
Before we have any setup solution for this case, more hardware details should be disclosed to get the right I/O limitation and capacity of the shared devices.
What is brand model of each shared monitor ? all of them 3 monitors.
What is the built model of each Mac Mini? MacMini M1 ? MacMini M2 ?... etc.
as stated it's unlikely you will wear out the SSD
these days they support Trim (computing) - Wikipedia
which likely mean that a SSD will outlast an old mechianical harddrive.
Interesting article. I bookmarked it to read again. Thanks
Video-only switch for Mac mini and single monitor
