dual monitors

Ok, this is way off base and has nothing to do with visual basic, but I figure there must be some guru on this forum that will read this message and maybe be able to offer some advice, and since this is the only forum I use at this point, I am gonna post this here and see what happens.
Thanks to this forum, when I first started programming in VB I learned about the SDI interface, where things can be moved around, and that has sparked an interest in setting up dual monitors to make my work a bit easier. So, I am trying to get a system up and running, but I am having problems. I have at home two monitors, one is 19'' samsung the other is 15' compaq. I have two video cards installed, and here lies the problem. The first video card is a Voodoo 3 pci slot 16mb card, and works great for my main monitor, the samsung. The second is an onboard ati 3d rage pro 4mb card, and both are installed correctly with no hardware conflicts. However, everytime I enable the 2nd monitor (on win98 btw) it says it is enabled, but nothing happens, and then when I hit apply it goes back to disabled. Has anyone seen this before? Is there anything I can do? I am beginning to wonder if it's just that the Voodoo3 is incompatible with dual monitors. Is this probable? And yes, my system is about four years old and not exactly what you would call state-of-the-art, but I'm a poor college student, with no money for further upgrades at this time...Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Thanks,
Brian

You should try with one of your 3D cards, and one simple, old-school 2D SVGA card. Maybe that'll work. You won't need the 3D on both, anyway ...

<font color=green>Do or do not
There is no try</font color=green>

You might also try this :

Multi monitor FAQ (http://www.digitalroom.net/techpub/multimon.html)

<font color=green>Do or do not
There is no try</font color=green>

I run 2 monitors also. I have used several different videeo cards with no problems. Right now I am running a 64 meg AGP for the Init monitor and an 8 meg pci for the secondary. All I have to do besides install drivers is right click the desktop, select properties, select the settings tab, select the #2 monitor and say yes to the message box or just click the Extend my windows desktop onto this monitor

Please note that I have never used onboard video and I am using Win ME.



JDT

With two monitors I'd be investing in a dual-head graphics card. JDT, what you're explaining......does that have the same functionality? (ie: you can use both monitors at the same time and drag app's from one screen onto the other)

<font color=blue> :: grin-r :: </font color=blue>

Yes, it is like a big Desktop or one big monitor split in two. You can put windows or icons on either one. As soon as the mouse goes past the edge of one monitor it starts on the other. It comes in real handy with VB. I can have a code module on one screen and the form on the other.

I had a single pci card that supported 2 monitors and it was no good. It just stretched the image to span both monitors. A circle would look like an elipse. They might be better now but I would stick with 2 seperate cards.




JDT

I can imagine how much better my coding life would be....images/icons/smile.gif
You mentioned in your other post that you simply click 'yes' when windows asks you to extend your desktop. Is this function available for Win98 (2nd edition)? I am VERY tempted to do this myself with the extra monitor I've got.
The dual-head graphics card I explained before I saw at a mates place. He didn't have the image stretching problem though - it looked very cool but the cost of buying a graphics card like that put me off.

<font color=blue> :: grin-r :: </font color=blue>

We have a dual-monitor graphics card on our CAD machine and it works wonderfully (the operator gets to have their AIM and MPG player on the second 15" monitor while they work on the primary 21" monitor, SHEESH!)...

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HOOOaaaaa! Semper Fi!