i got *****y at crawlingeye a while ago and i figured it was a good idea to stay away from SF for a while. maybe things are back at square one, maybe not.Quote:
nice setup tu2thepoo and btw, where have u been? it feels like u haven't been around recently...
the thing about a LOT of the S3 cards is that they have to be set to be the primary monitor in the BIOS - which means two things:Quote:
Originally posted by pudad
That is an awesome setup Tu2!!!!! I need to get a dual monitoe setup like that some day.... anything I should know about how to do it. Tried on my old system (p2 266 w/ 160mb ram) w/ this sis agp card and an S3 Virge DX 1mb, and there wans't even an option to do dual in the setup menu. Also, tried the S3 in my main system, and I got nothing on either screen :confused: ...
1) your bootup and DOS screens will all be on the PCI card
2) if you're NOT running a Win2k/XP system (although i think you are running win2k, IIRC), then your primary adaptor in Win9X will be the PCI card; which means all games, apps, etc, will default to using the PCI video card. also, you won't get any display on the second monitor until the OS boots up.
if you don't set it as the primary, win2k won't properly initialize the card, and Win9X won't give you the option. to be fair, though, this is not endemic of ALL pci cards - there are quite a few that can exist quite easily with the AGP set as primary in the BIOS (i believe Matrox's millenium series are one example).
[edit]
note that if you DO get dual monitors working, Win2k/XP will let you CHANGE which adaptor is the primary - so if you get it working on bootup then you're more or less set to go ahead with dual monitors.
also, many programs won't save multi-monitor info on exit - which means that if you set it to stretch across the monitors, it won't remember the settings on restart, nor will it open up at the same spot as you closed it, etc etc. win2k also has a known issue where if the two (or more) adaptors are running at DIFFERENT bit depths, desktop/start menu icons will be in 256-color mode ONLY (no hi-color). also, you can't stretch the main toolbar across the monitors without a dedicated program like Ultramon (although Nview / ATI Desktopmanagerthingy might do it for you).
the two biggest issues with multimonitors that i've found are:
1) if your monitors are too close and not properly shielded, their coils will cause interference with each other - flickering edges, discoloration, etc. as far as i can tell it's nothing permanent, but it's annoying and there's nothing you can try save using different refresh rates when possible, spacing the monitors out (at least, say, 5-6 inches), or getting some ferrite material (like Mu-Metal) to block the interference.
2) some games/apps are NOT properly coded to deal with multi monitors (at least in win2k, on my system). Some examples are GTA3 PC, Civ3 (to some extent), and No One Lives Forever (although the Lithtech engine is so damned buggy that it may just be instability on my system's part). Some symptoms include:
- distorted display on the secondary monitor when the primary switches resolutions
- if you move the mouse all the way to an edge in the game, it will NOT stop at the edge of the game screen. it will instead go onto the extended desktop, and if you inadvertently click you'll minimize the game and have to click back into the game
- video playback may freeze (civ3 on occasion). this is especially apparent on video playback with SVCDs or sometimes Divx - if you drag them to different monitors it will either stop playback or corrupt the video stream.
- the game will attempt to initialize on the secondary monitor instead of the primary, then give you an error message
again, this isn't endemic of all games/apps. Paint Shop Pro and Mozilla are apps that work just fine with multimonitors (IE6 doesn't save all of the multimon info though - it'll save position but not screen size if you stretch it across monitors). TES:Morrowind and Fallout Tactics properly capture the mouse driver so you don't get issue #2. Once you enable Litestep/Multimonitor support in winamp, it correctly saves multimon information. AOL instant messenger actually works pretty much perfectly with dual-monitor setups (surprising, ain't it?).
so, if you don't have a dedicated dual-view (or more) board and software, dual monitors can be kind of a pain. But i got my S3 virge for 10 bucks, and my NEC M700 for 5 bucks from my office, so i'm willing to deal with the issues as they come up.
......yep, that's about all i can think of about that.
