semi-OT: multiple monitors with Dell Inspiron 530

[Giles Orr]

Hi Alexandre.

2009/12/27 Alexandre Cavalcante Alencar <alexandre.alencar-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>:
> 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.

Did you do that?  Did you actually buy and successfully install a PCI
video card?  Because my limited testing suggests that the Dell BIOS
would disable the PCI-E video card if you used a PCI video card and
vice versa.  I have a spare, very old PCI card that I can try, I
suppose that would be the sensible thing to do.  I'll try that and
report back.

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

Two or more PCI-E slots cost money.  Dell doesn't spend any more of
that than they have to.  I only wish I had another PCI-E slot ...

Right at the moment I'm looking at Xdmx, but it's not very promising
as it means having to run two computers, and it also would probably
make suspending the main machine extremely iffy - I'm not up to
writing suspend scripts at all, never mind the level of complexity
that would probably be required to re-establish an Xdmx connection
after the machine came out of suspend ...

> 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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