[HyperHacker]

I got a second monitor today, so I decided I'd throw an old PCI video card I had into my computer and plug it in. With a little buggery I can use both, but there are problems.

First of all, the hardware info:
Monitor #1 is at 1600x1200, 32-bit colour, 75hz. The video card is a Chaintech Volari XGI83 plugged into the only AGP port; it has 128MB and TV/DVI-out. The TV/DVI-out shows up as a third, disabled monitor. I can't use this (except to display the same thing as is on the first, and at a lower resolution) because the driver crashes, which isn't related to this problem (and I really don't care).

Monitor #2 is at 800x600, 16-bit colour, 85hz. The video card is "Cirrus Logic 5446 Compatible Graphics Adapter". I can't identify the type but here's some pictures: 1, 2, 3. I couldn't get any decent images with my good camera so I had to use a webcam. It has 1MB and is plugged into a PCI slot.

Now if I set things up a certain way, it works, but it's not the way I want it. There's a few problems setting things up the way I do want.

1) In my BIOS I have to set the PCI card to be the primary monitor, which means the BIOS text and Windows startup screen show up on the second monitor, and I don't want that. If I set it to AGP, I can only use one monitor. Windows suddenly forgets about the PCI card and detects it as new. The AGP monitor (which is set as primary in Windows) flashes and nothing happens. In the device manager the PCI card has an error: This device cannot start. (Code 10).

2) When the other monitor does work, the desktop wallpaper is displayed wrong. I use a 1024x768 JPEG set to Stretch. When set up this way, only the middle of the image is shown on the PCI monitor, which looks ugly. When set to Tile mode, the image is tiled on both (which is also ugly) but on the PCI, it has the right half of the image on the left! In Center mode, the image is actually scaled down to 800x600, which looks good on the PCI monitor but bad on the AGP. Is there a way I can select a different wallpaper for each monitor? (Screenshot below)

[edit] I forgot about a third problem: 3D doesn't work right. Since such an old card can't do 3D, obviously it won't work on the PCI monitor, but if I run a 3D screen saver (only tried 3D Pipes so far), even when using software rendering on the PCI card, it says it can't create a Direct3D device on both monitors. I have to have it display nothing on the PCI card to work, and that worries me since other 3D apps may not have such an option.
Also is there a way to 'jump' the cursor into the range of the second monitor when it's off-screen? What I mean is I have it positioned beside the first, and running at a lower resolution. If I move the cursor to the top of the first monitor and to the right it just hits the egde; to move it onto the second, I have to move it at least halfway down and then right. Can I make it instead, that if it's too high to move to the second monitor, it just moves down to where it can?

Here's a screenshot showing both the wallpaper problem and the cursor range. The second monitor is to the right of the taskbar; you can see its display is just part of the wallpaper repeated. The black area at the top is empty space, not displayed on either monitor. The cursor will not enter this area; what I want is when it tries to, to just jump to the top of the right monitor (or just enter it anyway).

[edit] I found a hacky way to have separate wallpapers: use a 2400x1200 image in tiled mode (it doesn't work in other modes) and just paste an 800x600 image in the area that's shown on the second monitor. For some reason the colours look bad on the second, though; even though it's in 16-bit colour it looks more like 8-bit. It's also not a very convenient way to have to do things; I'd still like to know if there's a proper way to do this.

Also I notice that when I degauss one monitor, the other jumps. (They're both right next to eachother.) Is that bad?

[another edit] Found another weird bug. I used to be able to select 1024x768 with 256 colours for the second monitor, but now I can't. O_o I'd like to at least see how that looks. (Can't decide which is better, 800x600 @ 16-bit or 1024x768 @ 8-bit.) When I click List All Modes in the properties window, it says it's capable of that (and even higher resolution, but at 60hz, eww).

[yet another edit] Scratch that. I just need to select the desired mode in the List All Modes dialog, then hit OK twice and it switches. And 256 colour is in fact quite ugly.

This post has been edited by HyperHacker: 10 May 2006 - 01:37 AM

[HyperHacker]

Argh, more problems! Windows will no longer restore from hibernation, and every time I boot up it finds the "new" video card all over again and I have to re-apply all my settings.

[JuMz]

Wow. Quite a story. The source of your solution is going to be finding out why you get DEVICE CANNOT START CODE 10 when you have the AGP Video Card as a primary and the PCI Video Card as secondary. This may have to do with your Motherboard BIOS and / or drivers for the PCI card.

What approaches have you taken regarding drivers and bios?

[HyperHacker]

The BIOS doesn't have a lot of options regarding graphics cards. Setting PCI to primary gets it to start, and setting Suspend Mode (I think that's what it was called) to Suspend To RAM (S3) enabled hibernation, though it just freezes when it starts back up. Windows seems to be a bit confused; Stand By was disabled earlier today but it's there after rebooting. It also didn't forget about the card and settings this time; started up with the monitor correctly placed and everything. I haven't found any drivers because I don't know what brand the card is. (Cirrus Logic Compatible just seems to be a generic name for old cards; I tried two completely different cards and both said that, the other one was defective though.) At some point I hope to buy a better PCI card but that could take a few months. I think this card's age might be the biggest problem (and even if not, 800x600 is weak).

Also, I Googled the error message; apparently a lot of people get this, but I didn't see any solutions.

This post has been edited by HyperHacker: 11 May 2006 - 01:46 PM

[adamb2k6]

Why not just get a vid card with 2 outs? They are cheap enough nowadays.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814161150

This post has been edited by adamb2k6: 11 May 2006 - 01:57 PM

[HyperHacker]

Well I already have a pretty nice AGP card, wouldn't want it to go to waste. All the dual cards anywhere near my price range are very low-end.

BTW, it seems that it forgets the monitor settings about half the time when I reboot. Sometimes it claims to have found the video card all over again, usually I just have to go to display properties and turn it on, position it, set the resolution etc. At one point when I was closing the screen saver I saw the "Found new hardware" popup in the corner, saying it found the video card again, but then it just disappeared and nothing had been changed.

[allen2]

Your problem may come from an irq sharing problem in your Bios. Check mother board manual wich pci slot share irq with the other video or another device. The goal is to get the agp video controler use one irq alone or none if possible (another setting in the bios) and do the same for the pci video controler. Also if your bios has a "pnp OS" settings set it to yes. If you can only find shared pci slot, you might try disabling serial port, paralel port and so on via bios to get it working and then enable them one by one later.
Hope this helps.

[HyperHacker]

OK, sorry for the delay but I tried this with no success. When the PCI card is set as the primary display, Windows doesn't even show it as using any IRQ. The AGP card is always on IRQ 16 which I can't even select for the PCI slots in the BIOS. I can't change the IRQ used for AGP, nor is there any PNP OS setting. Disabling the serial and parallel ports didn't help either.

[HyperHacker]

Crap, I just found a big problem. With the PCI card set as primary, which is the only way I can use both monitors, programs that use OpenGL through SDL - which the 3D apps I make do - crash! Can't really tell if it's because of having 2 monitors or because the PCI card has no hope of doing 3D, I would guess it's the latter though. That means I have to switch cards and turn off the second monitor whenever I want to do 3D!

[janus zeal]

You might want to see if there is a bios update for your motherboard.

[nitroshift]

janus zeal, on Jun 4 2006, 06:04 AM, said:

You might want to see if there is a bios update for your motherboard.

i doubt that a bios update will solve anything since the pci card isn't able to render any 3D... but i wait for someone to prove me wrong.

[HyperHacker]

Alright, I did a BIOS update. That fixed a few things; my onboard LAN controller seems to work now (not that I need it). Seems the only things it didn't fix are the floppy drive (pfft who cares) and this video problem.

[HyperHacker]

ARGH. I bought a new PCI card - an ATI Rage XL 8MB - and it hasn't helped at all! I get the exact same problems. This is really getting to be a problem, as I was hoping to develop some 3D programs, but they won't run when the second monitor is enabled.

[EchoNoise]

Make yourself sane again... buy a dual output agp card

[markajm]

I've been using dual monitors for years and have found that some hardware combinations just don't work well together. you might be fighting a loosing battle.

this is made worst when the specs of your second card are way below those of your main card.

every time a window with 3d content crosses to the other monitor it will stuff up.

now, you said that your agp card had DVI? like in the attached pictures?

if so, why not but a DVI to DSUB adapter and run both monitors on the one card. choose the "extend my windows desktop onto this monitor" option in the dispaly properties. since you say the driver crashes, try a different version.. try an older one.

are there any bios updates for the AGP card?

Attached File(s)

•  dvi_card_female_connector.jpg (6.52K)
  Number of downloads: 2
•  DVI_D_female.jpg (7.39K)
  Number of downloads: 2

This post has been edited by markajm: 21 June 2006 - 06:32 PM

[HyperHacker]

A dual-head card or adapter would be ideal, but the video card I just bought cost everything I'll have for a while, and I can only return it for half what I paid (technically half the cost was shipping), so I'd like to avoid ending up not being able to use it. The AGP card does have DVI, but I can't say how well it works - the drivers crash (BSOD) when I try to use the TV-Out as a separate monitor, which isn't really a good sign, and I have no DVI devices to test with.
I don't see any BIOS updates for the AGP card. Also, hibernation still doesn't work with this card, which makes me think it's a problem with Windows or the BIOS.

I guess in the worst case I'll have to trade my AGP card for my mom's, which is dual-head but only 16MB. (She only uses one monitor, but that was the best deal we could find.) I fear it won't run a lot of the 3D apps I use, though. (Nintendo 64 emulation, mostly. Not high-end games, but more than just spinning cubes.) Plus that still leaves me with a useless second card.

BTW, thanks for all the help everyone.

[edit] Alright, I found a workaround for the SDL bug, and got the BIOS setup/Windows boot screen on the screen I wanted as a bonus. Simple solution: Make the PCI card primary both in the BIOS and in Windows. I didn't want to do this before because I feared the card I was using might die at any moment leaving me unable to access the BIOS settings to switch back to AGP, but hopefully that shouldn't be an issue now. 3D is working on both screens too, so that's the big problem out of the way. However, Windows still won't recover from hibernation (tried S1/POS and S3/STR in the BIOS, with Call VGA BIOS on and off). It brings both monitors up at the correct resolution and refresh rate to a black screen and freezes. If I plug in a USB device it powers on, then off again a few seconds later. Also, it still won't use both cards if AGP is set to primary in the BIOS.

Oh, and I also found the source of the colour problems: bad video settings. :-p

[edit] Oh yeah, and ever since I made the PCI card primary in Windows, every window redraws UNBEARABLY SLOW, especially translucent ones. It makes a text editor completely unuseable with translucency enabled, which I do all the time. >_<

This post has been edited by HyperHacker: 22 June 2006 - 09:28 PM

[HyperHacker]

Well, I reinstalled Windows. Nothing changed. I can't decide whether to switch to Linux or just toss the whole thing out the window and go amish.

[edit] I found a workaround for the slowness: Swap the monitors (big one back on AGP) and re-position them in Windows so the big monitor is on the left like it is in real life. That doesn't fix the slowdown, but the small one is pretty much just for throwing status displays, Winamp, and desktop icons into, so it doesn't really matter if it's drawing a bit slow; the big one is where I would put web browsers, text editors etc, so as long as it's fast, it's all good.

Although, one side effect to this arrangement: Setting up wallpapers is a big pain.
[Image here]
(Actual image on the left, result on the right. You might want to avoid clicking that if you're at work; it's nothing major, but why risk it?)

[more edit]
"System Standby Failed
---------------------------
The device driver for the 'ATI Technologies, Inc. RAGE XL PCI' device is preventing the machine from entering standby. Please close all applications and try again. If the problem persists, you may need to update this driver."

So at least Windows knows that there's a problem now, and doesn't just try anyway and crash. Not so with hibernation though. :-/

This post has been edited by HyperHacker: 23 June 2006 - 11:59 PM

[markajm]

Quote

The AGP card does have DVI, but I can't say how well it works - the drivers crash (BSOD) when I try to use the TV-Out as a separate monitor, which isn't really a good sign, and I have no DVI devices to test with.

just because it crashes on tv-out does not mean it will crash when using the dvi. they are two completly different things.

also, you don't need a dvi device to use the dvi port. an every-day crt using a dvi-dsub adaptor will work fine (like in the pic). hunt around and you can find one for about $5 - $7

Attached File(s)

•  dsub_dvi.jpg (23.37K)
  Number of downloads: 2

[Takeshi]

I can only say, my 4 yr old MSI K7T266 MoBo with ATI AIW xt600 AGP with dual-VGA out (connected to 2 LCDs) works without any problems.

[HyperHacker]

Alright, well I called the local Circuit City because they're really the only electronics place in town. As expected they're charging a whopping 15 dollars which is more than I have at the moment, so I'll have to wait a little while to get one. However when I was looking them up I noticed they mention "this adapter has enough bandwidth for up to 1600x1200 @ 60hz" and such. Am I going to need a really expensive one to use high resolutions? Currently I have 1600x1200 on one monitor and 1152x864 on the other (I'd like to go up to at least 1280x1024, but the monitor can't do it), and I simply can't live with less than 16-bit colour (uuuuuuugly) or less than 70hz refresh (it burns!). I fear if I buy one of these adapters it won't support such high resolutions. For that matter, the video card itself only goes up to 1024x768 when TV Out is enabled (it can do that fine as long as the TV is disabled in Windows; it just shows the same thing as the monitor). I'm not sure whether it does this because TVs don't support such high resolutions, or if it's actually limited to such low resolution when using 2 devices.