Multi Monitor Computing

I've been using a dual monitor setting for about 4 months now. In that time I have come to regard the extra desktop real estate as invaluable. Most half decent graphics cards based on ATI (Radeons) or nVidia (GForce) support a second screen, but not many people use it. Should you have a spare monitor gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere, now might be the time to get just a little extra mileage out of it.

HARDWARE

My setup is based on an Asus GForce 4400 with 128MB RAM onboard. The 'main' monitor is an iiyama Visionmaster 19" and it normally runs at 1280 x 1024 at 85 Hz. I managed to acquire a Sun workstation 20" beast. This presented a couple of problems, not least of which was how to attach a monitor with a 13W3 connector which looks like the plug on the left which has to be converted to a vga one, seen on the right:

Fortunately, there is always help on hand, and I located a page which explains how to connect Sun 13W3 to VGA here. You need a specific connector which is as common as hen's teeth; I eventually tracked down the specified adaptor from these people in the States which includes a capacitor of some sort for the whole thing to work.

The Sun is a bit picky on resolutions and refresh rates so it took some experimenting to get it going in anything other than 1024 x 768 x 60Hz. Luckily for me it will run at 1280 x 1024 x 75Hz, so I simply reduced the iiyama's refresh rate to 75Hz and matched screen settings.

There is one final hurdle to overcome, with output to the second monitor. This is caused by the GForce video card which has 1 VGA output & 1 DVI. My GForce came with a DVI to VGA converter which is used to run the Sun Monitor, any half decent card is supplied with one, giving you the opportunity to use a second screen. Should your graphics card not have come with the adaptor, you can source them online easily enough. Now you have a DVI to 13W3, 13W3 to VGA. You can see how this looks in the following image, the upper left connector is the DVI splitter with the 13W3 converter on the floor to the rear. The primary monitor goes directly from the VGA port in the upper rear connection. Messy cabling, but it works fine:

WINDOWS

The first and most obvious sign of change in Windows other than the extra desktop space is when you visit Display Properties and see the extra monitor listed (I have compressed the image to speed loading, hence the graininess). You drag and drop them to match your setup, I've shown a couple of options in the two small images to the right, mine is as per the first image:

You tell Windows which PC is the Primary and use the Drop down options under 'Display' to adjust setting individually if required; say the second monitor was a 17" and only ran at 1024 for instance. Click OK and that's you done. You can also do this in the nView menu, but there is no need to delve in there just yet if you don't want to.

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