I think this has been covered here before but I can't seem to find it, I am wanting to hook up 2 monitors to my system, I installed the second video card and now when I turn on my computer the new card and monitor turn on and the old monitor and video card do not, my question is does your system board have to have support for multiple cards or should it work on most any system?

specs from 1,000 feet
Origanal card - ATI Rage 128 AGP with AOC Spectrum 7Glr 17" Monitor
Added card - Ati Rage II PCI with Pionex crap 15" Monitor

Thanks for any info

As far as I understand this, and Acid_kewpie knows best as he runs duel heads, is that one term is always going to sit like a dink in ttys, and you're going to have to do a lot of hand-hacking XF86Config, adding an entry for monitor1 (the other is 0), and card1... and I think something called Xinerama.

Luck,

Finegan

I actually haven't gotten to the linux part of it when the computer posts it only turns on the one monitor, or is that normal and linux will pick up the second as it is coming up?

I tried doing this some time ago, but i gave up cuz i didn't have time to mess with X configuration. At one point i got both monitors to work but one had a really bad resoplution that for some reason i couldn't change even by specifying a seperate resolution in XF86Config. Anyway if i remember well only one monitor will turn on during boot-up and once you are in linux you can specify a startx -- -commandtostartonsecondmonitor (Which i dont remember) and you can do thios only after you have hacked your X config file.
Well hope that helps, but although dual heads are really cool, think do you really need a dual head, and is it worth it going through all the trouble (Which is not that bad) to get it to work?
-NSKL

hehe, i'm the greatest. :-D right erm.. yeah that's pretty much teh system i run, right down to the crappy monitor (mines only a crappy 14" tho)_

you can look at my current X configuration at erm... where shall i put it.... http://cakenet.dynu.com/dualhead that'll do. it's pretty easy to write by hand once you get the idea. best way is to use whatever configuration program to set up each head seperately working nicely and then just make up a server layout... i've got three there as you can see, unless you're reading this in three months time in which case you can't.

i found that the system would only kick into life with the crap card being loaded first and then the agp being added to that serverlayout.

That's as far as i really bothered going. I *REALLY* recommend you try to avoid Xinerama, as it's a bit lame and messes things up and over complicates the issue. it's nice to be able to drag windows between terminals but otehr than that i found no benefits really. having said that tho Xinerama is best with Gnome and prolly KDE, while blackbox automatically loads nicely on each head seperately. obviously you can share the mouse on both heads without xinerama.

erm.. that'll do for now i guess....

oh... "do you need a dual head?"



YES YES YES YES YES YES YES


that's surely a question that only someone who's neevr used one would say... i'd NEVER go back now!

OK, another question for acid_kewpie then.
From what i understood you start up two X sessions, one for each monitor, and then switch between them with ctrl+alt+F*. is this correct?
Thanks in advance!
-NSKL

no no, just one session. all xinerama does it stretch a single desktop across two monitors. without it you just have two seperate desktops that are quite aware of each other just have their own desktop each. you still just move the mouse through the side of the screens to change which one you use.

Hey i got a question for you guys--

Is it possible to use 2 video cards but make it so that my second vid card is the one i use for linux and have the first disabled only in linux

I have not been able to find drivers for my prowler 64tv card - Thats why i need the second card resolution sucks right now

of course it is, if you set up /etc/X11/XF86Config right, you will be able to easily choose which card you use.

and in future, please do not drag up old threads. start a new thread IF you can't find the answer elsewhere, thanks. if you run xf86config then you should by default set up both video cards i presume. personally i set mine up manually, and you may end up needing to specify the hardware location of the card you want to use, as it would probably default to the agp (assuming you're on agp of course)

as you can see, the BusID line specifies that actual location of the card, found by using lspci or such like.