4 monitors on one computer?

pengyou · 03-12-2006, 03:06 PM

About a year ago I thought I read an aricle about a computer that was hooked up to 4 monitors - using 2 dual head video cards - so that you can spread your desktop over 4 monitors. Just yesterday i was talking to a couple of tekkies and they said that it was impossible. Is it possible?

DrEwMoNeY · 03-12-2006, 04:09 PM

This is possible, I know that Windows XP will support up to 10 monitors.

You could use two dual-head cards to utilize four monitors. I know that PNY makes (or made, old PCI) a card with 4 monitor outputs.

I would imagine the motherboard or BIOS might need to support multiple video cards, not sure about that though.

ilikejam · 03-12-2006, 04:26 PM

Hi.

According to Google, 'There is no limitation on the number of displays imposed by Xinerama itself' (Xinerama is the multi-head extension to X). You could theoretically have 5PCI and 1AGP cards serving one desktop over 24 displays (if they were all 4 head cards). You could also split the screens up, and have two completely seperate desktops (one GNOME, and one KDE, perhaps?) on 12 screens each.

You could make a video wall...

pengyou · 03-12-2006, 05:59 PM

Awesome.....does anyone know a cheap way to convert notebook lcd's so that they can be used by a desktop? I have googled on this topic but did not get a definitive answer. There was a lot of discussion. Some said it was too expensive, some said maybe not. Has anyone done this?

Thanks

ilikejam · 03-12-2006, 06:57 PM

It's 'non-trivial' to get a laptop screen working with a VGA/DVI connection. There's no standard for the connections, so while you might be able to get away with just changing the pins for one brand, you might require complex electronics for another. Depending on what your time is worth, it'd probably be cheaper to get a load old LCD monitors off eBay and go from there.

DeadPenguin · 03-12-2006, 07:32 PM

I run 3 monitors in Suse 10.0 on an oldish Amd athlon 2500+ box. I am using 3 ATI 9200. 1 AGP 2xPCI.
I have some cheap 17" dell Crt's i use. It is nice to have 3 seperate Desktops on 3 screens with 4 desktops on each. 12 desktops to troll through pretty fast.
Notebook lcd are expensive and a pain. You can get some pretty kick ass crts off ebay for cheap.

But, what we are conversing about here is kids stuff. Check out this link I ran across last night from digg.com.

http://www.plastk.net/
the man is sik.

Good Luck.

Regards,
Blair

acidburned · 03-13-2006, 01:41 AM

on a off topic that looked awsome!!

ilikejam · 03-13-2006, 03:57 AM

On a very similar note:

http://linuxgazette.net/124/smith.html

good hack, I'm sure you'll agree.

DrEwMoNeY · 03-13-2006, 08:54 AM

For those of you who don't have 12 servers and 24 monitors, waiting around for you to hook them up:

http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_rotm_april05.html

Doom 3, 1600x1200 @ 141.5 FPS is pretty impressive. I like the 16GB of RAM too.

Slick666 · 03-13-2006, 09:13 AM

I've seen a Matrox G200 quad video card where they in a sence put four independent processors on one PCI-X interface card (No this is not PCI Express). That allows a sigle card to support up to 16 monitors.

DrEwMoNeY · 03-13-2006, 05:01 PM

Not trying to be funny, I think this is what you saw:

"with four quad cards in one system, users can run up to 16 monitors"

http://www.matrox.com/mga/media_cent...l/2001/sia.cfm

Slick666 · 03-14-2006, 05:58 AM

Close. From what I understand Matrox put 4 quad processors on one card.

go Here

I haven't found an official manual for it but then again I really havent looked.

But.
Getting back to topic. Does linux have much multi monitor support?. I cant really see an advantage in the command line sense except possible having two sessions open on different monitors. I think it would be more helpful in a windowing enviroment like KDE.

Has anyone done something like that?

DrEwMoNeY · 03-14-2006, 07:10 AM

"Support for up to 16 monitors (will require 4 cards)"

Again, not being funny, but, I am quoting the site you gave.