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#1
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dual monitors?
Hi all...been building pc's for a couple years now. Gaming machines for
myself, some basic machines for web surfing and mail. I have a request from a friend for a pc that can support two monitors. My first question is do I need a higher end video card for this? If not how do you run it off a standard video connection (back of pc)? Secondly is it possible to have dual keyboards? He states that it is. I never gave the subject much thought. No need to until now. Just wanted some thoughts before I research some more or dive into this project. Dave |
#2
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First of all, you need an OS that support two monitors, like Windows XP.
Then you need a video card that supports two monitors, or two video cards. I am not sure about two keyboards. As an experiment, I plugged in two mice on my pc, a USB one and a PS2 one(I booted the system with the PS2 one and later added the USB one). It worked fine. David Ciemny wrote: Hi all...been building pc's for a couple years now. Gaming machines for myself, some basic machines for web surfing and mail. I have a request from a friend for a pc that can support two monitors. My first question is do I need a higher end video card for this? If not how do you run it off a standard video connection (back of pc)? Secondly is it possible to have dual keyboards? He states that it is. I never gave the subject much thought. No need to until now. Just wanted some thoughts before I research some more or dive into this project. Dave |
#3
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Two keyboards = hardware conflict. Not possible.
-- DaveW "David Ciemny" wrote in message news:MWzNc.8405$zf3.390@trndny03... Hi all...been building pc's for a couple years now. Gaming machines for myself, some basic machines for web surfing and mail. I have a request from a friend for a pc that can support two monitors. My first question is do I need a higher end video card for this? If not how do you run it off a standard video connection (back of pc)? Secondly is it possible to have dual keyboards? He states that it is. I never gave the subject much thought. No need to until now. Just wanted some thoughts before I research some more or dive into this project. Dave |
#4
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"JK" wrote in message ... First of all, you need an OS that support two monitors, like Windows XP. Then you need a video card that supports two monitors, or two video cards. I am not sure about two keyboards. As an experiment, I plugged in two mice on my pc, a USB one and a PS2 one(I booted the system with the PS2 one and later added the USB one). It worked fine. David Ciemny wrote: Hi all...been building pc's for a couple years now. Gaming machines for myself, some basic machines for web surfing and mail. I have a request from a friend for a pc that can support two monitors. My first question is do I need a higher end video card for this? If not how do you run it off a standard video connection (back of pc)? Secondly is it possible to have dual keyboards? He states that it is. I never gave the subject much thought. No need to until now. Just wanted some thoughts before I research some more or dive into this project. Dave I'm trying to put together the leanest (but of good quality) machine together. I have an ati 9800xt gfx card and it has two adapters on it. One for a crt, the other for a lcd. Possible to run two crt's? Looking at the ati site regarding their hydravision but didn't quite see anything other than dual monitor support. Anyone have any experience with this? Thanks again... Dave |
#5
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David Ciemny wrote:
Hi all...been building pc's for a couple years now. Gaming machines for myself, some basic machines for web surfing and mail. I have a request from a friend for a pc that can support two monitors. My first question is do I need a higher end video card for this? If not how do you run it off a standard video connection (back of pc)? I've got this feature with my Asus (ATI) 9600XT. It works well enough, and I got the card for about $140. |
#6
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In message "Mark Shaw"
wrote: If you want dual monitor support, you have 2 options: - use a specialised graphics card that supports multiple monitors - use an operating system 2000/xp (and maybe 98) that supports 2 monitors and insert 2 monitors in your pc. Normally you'll already have an AGP, so its a matter of putting in a PCI graphics card. NT4 had support, depending on the graphics card. A dualhead G400, or 2xG200s would do the trick. 98 added support for multiple monitors using virtually any low-end PCI video card and it was sweet, but not all cards (especially 3D cards) were compatible. 2000's support is sloppy, but useable if you need to. XP's support is great, almost any video cards work, and it's fairly seamless. -- They call it "PMS" because "Mad Cow Disease" was already taken |
#7
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"David Ciemny" wrote in message news:MWzNc.8405$zf3.390@trndny03... Hi all...been building pc's for a couple years now. Gaming machines for myself, some basic machines for web surfing and mail. I have a request from a friend for a pc that can support two monitors. My first question is do I need a higher end video card for this? If not how do you run it off a standard video connection (back of pc)? If you want dual monitor support, you have 2 options: - use a specialised graphics card that supports multiple monitors - use an operating system 2000/xp (and maybe 98) that supports 2 monitors and insert 2 monitors in your pc. Normally you'll already have an AGP, so its a matter of putting in a PCI graphics card. Its been some while since I used a specialised graphics card that supported multiple monitors but my experiences werent the best. Frequently windows message boxes would appear in the middle of the screen which would be split between the monitors. A constant pain. You had to rely on the software that comes with the graphics card to do all the work, and more often than not it did not seemlessly integrate well with Windows. I now use Windows 2000 with AGP and PCI graphics cards, and have never experienced a dialog to appear split between the two screens. Its much better. And most likely cheaper as you may have a few old PCI graphics cards lying around and these can be used no problem. HTH, Mark. |
#8
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A workaround may be to use a KVM switch with 2 (or more) user ports. Even
then it all depends on the kvm hardware if the 2 keyboards can have simultaneous control of a machine. Bit of an expensive solution though. "DaveW" wrote in message news:9qANc.39427$8_6.13644@attbi_s04... Two keyboards = hardware conflict. Not possible. -- DaveW "David Ciemny" wrote in message news:MWzNc.8405$zf3.390@trndny03... Hi all...been building pc's for a couple years now. Gaming machines for myself, some basic machines for web surfing and mail. I have a request from a friend for a pc that can support two monitors. My first question is do I need a higher end video card for this? If not how do you run it off a standard video connection (back of pc)? Secondly is it possible to have dual keyboards? He states that it is. I never gave the subject much thought. No need to until now. Just wanted some thoughts before I research some more or dive into this project. Dave |
#9
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"Mark Shaw" wrote in message ... ... that supports 2 monitors and insert 2 monitors in your pc. Ooops. Spot the mistake. I'm sure you can guess what i meant! |
#10
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In message "Mark Shaw"
wrote: ... that supports 2 monitors and insert 2 monitors in your pc. Ooops. Spot the mistake. I'm sure you can guess what i meant! I've actually been debating putting a 4" LCD monitor inside one of my servers for diagnostics. Would be a fun project, although ultimately perhaps more cool then useful. -- A fool and his money are soon popular. |
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