Visual art disply on older machines...

"John Weidenfeller" wrote in message
news:hrvfc.143218$w54.949627@attbi_s01...
Sorry for cross posting but I figured someone in these groups might be
able
to point me in the right direction or more importantly save me from
wasting
too much time.

So I have an old 400Mhz Machine I'm getting from a friend
I have 2 Monitors and a projector as well as I just bought a lot of 5 PCI
graphics cards on Ebay.

Now what would like to do is hook all this up with a dedicated machine
for
video/visual display for parties.

So basically have the mobitors and projectors scattered around (and
decorated of course) showing video clips ...

snip

Off the shelf Windows can only control 2 standard graphics cards, for more
than 2 you need specialist display cards and software.
The 400MHz processor isn't fast enough to decode mpeg2 movie clip in
software and play it smoothly on a single monitor never mind multiple,
presumably different, displays.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/p...ltimonitor.asp
"John Weidenfeller" wrote in message
news:hrvfc.143218$w54.949627@attbi_s01...
Sorry for cross posting but I figured someone in these groups might be
able
to point me in the right direction or more importantly save me from
wasting
too much time.

So I have an old 400Mhz Machine I'm getting from a friend
I have 2 Monitors and a projector as well as I just bought a lot of 5 PCI
graphics cards on Ebay.

Now what would like to do is hook all this up with a dedicated machine
for
video/visual display for parties.

So basically have the mobitors and projectors scattered around (and
decorated of course) showing video clips and what would really be cool
would
be to have a mic on the machine to take the sound in from the party and
have
the visuals dynamically adjust based on the beat.

I know winamp used to have a plug in for this but I never got it to
reliably
work.

So my questions are if I load this machine with windows 2000 would this
work
or is there not enough power??? Since its a dedicated machine if I remove
stuff could I get it to work or will I need to try Linux or something???
Or
is it pointless and should I just wait till I get a Gig machine or
greater??? Which will be a while since I am trying to pay off bills. :-(

Also any othere useful fun ideas would be great.

Thanks and sorry for the cross post, but I figured these groups might have
someone whose done this sort of thing.
John

Off the shelf Windows can only control 2 standard graphics cards, for more
than 2 you need specialist display cards and software.
The 400MHz processor isn't fast enough to decode mpeg2 movie clip in
software and play it smoothly on a single monitor never mind multiple,
presumably different, displays.

Who told you that? I'm fairly certain that the limit for Windows (since
98SE?) was 8 or 16 displays - if you had enough slots.

"Noozer" wrote in message
news:5Tyfc.122439$Pk3.59914@pd7tw1no...
Off the shelf Windows can only control 2 standard graphics cards, for
more
than 2 you need specialist display cards and software.
The 400MHz processor isn't fast enough to decode mpeg2 movie clip in
software and play it smoothly on a single monitor never mind multiple,
presumably different, displays.

Who told you that? I'm fairly certain that the limit for Windows (since
98SE?) was 8 or 16 displays - if you had enough slots.


Who? Windows fairy of course.
You're almost right.
I always believed that it was one primary and one secondary adapter only.
Searching through the MSKB it transpires that Win98, 98SE and Me can support
up to 9 monitors, 1 primary and 8 secondary. These can be connected to
multiheaded or individual graphics cards. WinXP can control up to 10
monitors and I could not find a limit for Win2k but its definitely more than
2. It also appears that under Win2k all monitors have to run the same
resolution whereas under XP, 98, 98SE and Me all can have different
settings.

I have plenty of old 1 to 4MB PCI graphics cards so will have a play later.

"John Weidenfeller" wrote in message
news:FL0hc.20736$hw5.32787@attbi_s53...
SO I now have reorganzed some of my equipment and have been left with an
800Mhz PIII to set up with multiple monitors.

I have an ATI Rage 128 card in it now and can chose 2 from the following
list of cards:

2 S3 Virge/DX
1 Diamond Stealth 64Dram
1 S3 Trio 64V+
1 S3 Trio 64V2DX

So I have 3 available slots for video cards so I was going to use the ATI
card as well as two of the above PCI cards. Though I only seem to get one
to
work. The scond card shows up in the hardware info page with a yellow !

So I read somewhere that you can't have more than 1 S3 Trio card but
wans't
sure if thsi was my problem or if there was some way around it.


Select your OS and type "multiple display" in here and learn:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...&ln=EN-US&FR=0