I'm glad I checked back here! Turns out the connectors aren't nearly as standardized as I thought. A little digging confirmed that I do indeed need extron's branded connectors; they were a little annoyingly expensive, but no on ever promised professional-grade AV equipment was going to be cheap :P

I have something of an odd configuration; all of my computers are in one room, and my workstation and most of my switchers are in the other. I could conceivably move most of the switchers to the other side, but one way or the other, some things are going to have to be on the other side of the bridge(the computer monitor, for example, can't move without defeating the purpose)

I do know that serial communications over long distances are possible; so if I can't just run it over straight cat5, I'll figure something else out.

Fun project, to be sure.