[Dx4win] Dual monitors

[Thomas, Michael L]

All,
I have run a dual-head Matrox for several years now with good success.
With the upgrade to XP and a PCI video card I now run three 17"
monitors. This gives lots of area to work with, mainly contesting and
preparing for an SO2R station. 
Regards,
Mike, NA5U

-----Original Message-----
From: dx4win-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:dx4win-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Mark Mowery AA8TC
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 5:13 PM
To: Jerry.Van; DX4WIN Mailing List
Subject: [Dx4win] Dual monitors

Hi Jerry,

I ran into the same problem: between DX4WIN, ARCluster User, MMTTY, and 
occasionally a web page all open at the same time, a single 17" monitor
just 
wasn't cutting it anymore. I had an old 19" CRT monitor around, so I
used 
that for a while, playing around with font sizes and different
resolutions, 
but in the end it didn't seem to add all that much more useable area.

I bought a used Matrox dual-head video card on eBay for $15 (including 
shipping) so I was able to attach a second 17" monitor. If you have the 
physical space on your desktop, you'll get much more usable monitor area
by 
going this way than by just increasing the size of your existing
monitor. 
W98SE and later is all ready for dual monitor support with only minimal 
setup. It's pretty slick: as you move the mouse pointer off one side of
one 
screen it flows smoothly over onto the other monitor. You can even
position 
windows to span both monitors, although I'm not sure why you'd really
want 
to do that, hi.

The older Matrox card works perfectly well with my shack computer, which
is 
itself an older Windows98 system, and I had the extra monitor anyway, so
$15 
and a little setup time is all I have invested. I did have to download
the 
drivers off the internet, but they were still available on the Matrox 
website.

There's more than one maker of dual-head video cards. NVIDIA comes to
mind, 
and I'm sure there's others. You can also add a second used single-head 
video card and plug a monitor into each card for just about the same
amount 
of money, but there compatibility issues that sometimes come up when you
try 
to plug more than one video card into the same motherboard. If I had
another 
video card laying around, I'd probably try that first, but if I had to
buy 
one, I'd go with a dual-head card.

Anyway, food for thought.

73,
Mark AA8TC
 

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