semi-OT: multiple monitors with Dell Inspiron 530

[Alexandre Cavalcante Alencar]

Hey Giles, how you doing?

I passed this same deception with a Dell OptiPlex 745. I installed a
nVIDIA Dual Head card and the onboard on gone disabled. I asked Dell
support team and they said it's not possible to have onboard and
PCI/PCI-E cards working together. I had to add a second PCI card to
have 3-heads setup.

If you have more than one PCI-E slots, put 4 heads on it ;)

Best regards

On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 1:31 AM, Giles Orr <gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> The previously mentioned Samsung monitor is now attached to a Dell
> Inspiron 530 (a desktop, not a laptop).  The machine has built-in
> Intel video, which would have worked fine for my purposes, except I
> wanted dual head.  So I bought a Nvidia 6200 based dual head PCI-E
> card, which I've been reasonably happy with.  I already have two LCDs
> attached to the Dell, but it would appear that it's impossible to add
> a third to this machine.  I've updated the BIOS to the latest version
> and it's still impossible to use the onboard and PCI-E video cards at
> the same time.  If you boot with both connected, a BIOS level warning
> comes up: "oooh, I see you have an add-in card, you couldn't possibly
> want to use this.  To fix this problem please turn off the machine and
> disconnect the built-in card."  Okay, I changed the wording, but
> that's what it says.  You can force it to go on ... and then it
> disables the PCI-E and boots up.  The reverse is also possible: if you
> boot with the PCI-E, the onboard is disabled.  It treats PCI cards the
> same way: "this is the built-in card you don't want to use etc."  So
> it would appear that using three screens on this machine, which was my
> intention, is impossible.
>
> Is there any way to get around this?  So far I've come up with "never
> buy Dell again" - I'm not just forestalling Lennart here, I'm totally
> disgusted with them.  The one good thing about this machine is the
> 2.4GHz C2Q chip, which is wonderful.  The only other option seems to
> be buying a new mobo.  But that would recommend a new case, and
> probably a new video card, memory ... oh wait, that's practically
> buying a new computer.  So no, I don't want to follow that route just
> yet.  But I'd really like to have three monitors ...
>
> --
> Giles
> http://www.gilesorr.com/
> gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
> --
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-- 
Alexandre Alencar (Skarmeth)
http://blog.alexandrealencar.net/
http://www.alexandrealencar.net/
ITIL, CSM, LPI, MCP-I, MCP
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
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