semi-OT: multiple monitors with Dell Inspiron 530

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 02:41:58PM -0500, Giles Orr wrote:
> 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.

Well unfortunately very old PCI cards didn't support sharing and other
cards would be disabled if they were installed (or they simply wouldn't
work).  The BIOS setting for PEG/PCI to initialize first decides that
part.

Newer PCI cards were designed for use with AGP and PCIe cards and should
work fine.

Then there is the matrox video splitter devices of course, which might
be an option.

> 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 ...

Well that would mean a different chipset (which would not have onboard
video at all) and hence a much more expensive machine.

> 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 ...

-- 
Len Sorensen
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