Martz Goes Multi Monitor!

[martzweb]

I got offered a practically new 17" monitor today for very little money, so while i took the pre-requisite 2 seconds to think the purchase out, i considered exactly what the hell i was going to do with another monitor.....

......... MULTI MONITOR SETUP :D

The monitor itself is a packard-hell blue fronted thing, but it does 1280x1024 at 70hz and is, from what i can gather, made by LG, Daewoo or Samsung.

So ... cant be all that bad for £40 :D

I dug around and found a 4mb S3 Virge to power the second screen and dutifully installed it in the one remaining slot on my MSI Pro266-RU.

I spent about 30 minutes trying to get it to work with no success, before realising that in order for windows to see the pci card properly it must be set as the primary display in the bios.

Once i had got this little problem sorted out, all i had to do was boot into windows xp, go into my display settings, and check one tickbox to allow me to extend my desktop onto the second screen.

Once you have enabed dual mode, you can set screen sizes, colour depth and refresh rates independently, and it all seems to work pretty well.

In order to use apps on the second screen, all you need to do is drag the icon of the second screen to whichever side of your main monitor you have positioned it, apply all settings, and hey-presto! extra desktop real estate!

Your icons and start menu still reside on your main destop, but any object on your main screen can be dragged and dropped onto the second monitor simply by pulling them off the edge of your screen.

I'm a bit wary of using such an old card in my 1900xp athlon, so hopefully i will find something like a tnt2-pci that will do the job better ...... you do notice the difference in redraw speed between my ati rage fury pro and this ancient S3 Virge!

M

[martzweb]

Me is a dick... i forgot to post a pic :doof:

Main Monitor - Bitbenderforums
Sub Monitor - #Bitbendertech IRC & WMP

[Tuffie]

Well it gives ya a little extra real estate there to put things on,and the price sure was good :D .Of course the biggest and best thing is,it kind of matches your coffee cup :lol: :lol: :dev:

[Techvillage]

Originally posted by Tuffie
Of course the biggest and best thing is,it kind of matches your coffee cup :lol: :lol: :dev:


Hahaha - very funny Tuffie.... :D

Martz has now the joined the MMS club.... no looking back now....:)

[ImaginAsian]

whoa wait a minute you mean XP can do dual monitor without a dual head video card? I thought your video card needed to support dual output but it seems you are using your AGP and PCI slots with 2 video cards...more info please!

[prod]

The dual video card/monitor feature has been built into windows since 98SE.
Where ya been man??:beatsme:

[Techvillage]

Even before that Quad - we have been using multiple Matox Millenium cards on NT boxes since 1996....

Yep IA, very do-able - got u interested now? :)

[martzweb]

Dead Easy IA

Install a PCI Video Card, set your system to initialise the pci card first in the bios, reboot, windows starts up on the second card, but flips to your agp card as soon as your desktop appears.

When this happens, the output from the second card goes blank, so all you need to do is go into your display settings, and all will become apparent :D

And YES TV ..... i've only been using it for an evening and i know i cant do without it :)

.. the dual displays as well :D

m

[martzweb]

Here's an example of how i'm using it.......

21" monitor is running winxp with Outlook, while i have a VMWare session running on the 17" with Mandrake Linux 8.2 running in a window, displaying it's Ximian Evolution (Basically the GNU version of Outlook for linux).

With my main monitor set to 1600x1200, and the 17" set to 1152 x 864 it acts perfectly as an extension to my main destop.... i dont even notice a change of resolution when i drag and drop from one screen to the other.

only problem i've found with this usage of the system is i cant run the vmware session full screen, otherwise it flips back to the main monitor and blanks out the 17"

guess it just must be a small limitation..... no biggy :D

m

[martzweb]

here's how your display properties should now look :

[martzweb]

and here's what happens when you hit Prt Scr and paste into photoshop.

The Mandrake screen saver has kicked in by this stage.... funky no ?

m

[martzweb]

i'll try that again WITH a screen shot shall i ?

[Dramen]

Slick M, very slick, course that SS in linux must eat bigtime cpu cycles. :D Too bad there is no way of capturing or showing how that really looks, static pic just can't do justice.

Dual Displays are the way to go!!! 1 for your serious work and one to watch while your using it! ;)

[Mad dog]

Yawn, been there got the t-shirt :D

Martz, would have to agree that a PCi TNT2 will do just fine as a secondary card (got one myself). You'll get decent re-draw speeds, which is nice.

Once you've gone MM , you can never go back.

Now what i'd really like to see is a 3 way monitor setup. I know you've got the other 21" around there somewhere. Go one try it, you just might like it.

[TheHeretic]

so I wanna know one thing. Can I play a full screen game such as Diablo2 on the main monitor and than still ahve the use of my Desktop on the second screen? I should have more than enough computing power in this machine to handle the work load.


TheHeretic

[James]

If the 2nd GPU can handle the game,no problem :)

[ImaginAsian]

don't know if i could get use to having two monitors of dissimilar sizes...if i went with this, i would need another 21" monitor.

can u imagine my desktop then ...dayem

[Dramen]

Well I finally got a DVI to VGA adapter for my Radeon VE and just setup my Dual Display, gotta say this is useful tho it takes some getting use to. ATI's Hydravision helps with window controls a little more than win builtins but it still feels a bit awkward.

IA, I'm using an old 15" monitor for my 2nd screen so I would say that your right about having diff size screens being a problem. My :eyes: are a bit buggy going from my 19" to the 15", but that aside it's still better than having just one screen. :D

Main screen for here and 2nd screen to watch... :evilsmile :D

[Tuffie]

Hell I have trouble enough keeping up with one :lol:,but it does look like it would be handy :D

[JohnnyBra]

i'm thinking anything full screen will block out the 2nd monitor, will it not? Including Diablo I believe, if you run full screen then I'm guessing you can kiss monitor 2 byebye

[Dramen]

PRT Screen
Monitor 1: Full Browser window.
Monitor 2: Both Hardware and News monitors.

I just watch Monitor 2 for various news from around the web and then just click on something of interest and my browser pops open on Monitor 1. :D

And don't laugh at the wallpaper, gotta keep Darcy from gettin to excited. ;)

[ImaginAsian]

Arrrgh....that dual monitor setup looks to compelling. Im getting one at work so I run it through its paces to see if another 21" is really worth buying.