semi-OT: multiple monitors with Dell Inspiron 530

Alexandre Cavalcante Alencar alexandre.alencar-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Mon Dec 28 17:57:57 UTC 2009


Hi Giles, how you doing today?


On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Giles Orr <gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 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.

Yes, I have a nVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS PCI-E plus a nVIDIA RIVA TNT2 M64
installed on an Dell OptiPlex 745 running fine. This system runs
Debian Lenny plus updates and uses nVIDIA binary driver 185.18.36 (for
PCI-E card) and nouveau opensource driver (for PCI card). This is
connected to 3 LG L1953H 19" LCD monitors (DVI, VGA, VGA).

>
>> 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 ...

For some Dell's to get a new PCI-E slot it's a pain.

>
>> 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
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.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
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists





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