3 - Out Video Card or Something??? [modified] - Hardware & Devices Discussion Boards

If you are after the speed, I would go with the 2 disks and 1 partition. The Reason: It is difficult to reinstall the OS on a RAID System (AFAIR installing a Driver is only possible during Windows Setup), so even if you have 2 partitions, you almost always have to start from scratch.

If speed is important for data access only, I would use a third disk and install the OS there (non-raid), then keep the data on the 2 raptors in a raid-0.

If you dont have a third disk, go with the 2 seperate disks. Use one for the OS and software, the second for data.

Cheers,
Sebastian

--
Contra vim mortem non est medicamen in hortem.

Thanks for that.

I think that what I may do (as I only have space for 2 drives), is make it one raid-0 partition, and subst the data folder onto a different drive letter.

I like to keep the same data drive letter on all my computers, so that when transferring between them, any absolute paths remain the same.

Cheers,
Chris.

ChrisB
ChrisDoesDev[^]

So I've got a client that has just installed a LaserJet 5M onto an older than dust PC running Windows XP. The XP workstation has 256 MB Ram and about 4 half-starved hamsters for a processor. If I print from XP the characters look like a very long censored swear word with the strangest characters I've ever seen. If I print a test page from the printer itself it all looks just fine.

So I think that the parallel port on the XP box is hosed but I don't know how you would test that. I'm also wondering if there's anything else to do to try and check it or fix it? I'm also remoted on with LogMeIn so I'm not at the physical box and have zero desire to go there. I don't make weekend trips to breathe life into dinosaurs.

Any ideas? The next step is to have the client move it to LAN and try printing by IP and see if it has the same problem. If it doesn't then cool we know LPT1 is bad. Again any software that will test your LPT1 port and tell you if it's dead?

Did I ever mention that I hate hardware. I'd rather step through threads in the VC++ debugger of VS 2005 then even look sideways at an IDE cable. I've got Dell gold support on my desktop for the next 4 years and I couldn't be happier. 4 hours of down time maximum and they provide the technician and the parts for the party.

-- moved at 18:14 Sunday 28th January, 2007

Well, i replied in The Lounge, but it ended up in Never-Never Land, so here it is again... (for what that's worth)

I used to sanity-check printers by typing

>copy con lpt1
No fancy gfx, no control codes...
^Z
>

No idea if that still works, but if it'll print without problems then the issue is bad drivers; otherwise, check the cables, BIOS settings for LPT1, etc.

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Have a look at this and then tell me what you think about LPT1...

http://www.codeproject.com/lounge.asp?msg=1865518#xx1865518xx[^]

Ah, well, at least you have a clear plan of action now... Wink | ;)

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Hi, I have a problem with my laptop touch pad. I'm using dell latitute c600 and when i connect a mouse, my pointer is working fine. But when i'm on the road and using the touch pade on the laptop, the mouse pointer sometime go into a wrong direction and usually came to the edge of the screen. That is really made me frustrated.

From here, i would like to know is it possoble to change the touchpad from my laptop? Are there any software that could fix this problem?

Well crapola! Here I am totally stuck. I've got a Dell PowerEdge 2900 and I would sell my soul to get it to somehow run 3 monitors. So far nothing I have tried works. I get IRQ conflicts. I get system lockups. I get seriously depressed. Anyone know of a single PCI video card that will connect 3 monitors? Anyone know of some other solution that will connect 3 monitors to one card? Which might include one monitor spanning to another monitor (have no idea if that makes sense but one monitor would video out to another monitor) or any other ideas?

~~I'll PayPal someone $50 if they can help me get this working.~~ It's looking like I just have to get different hardware.

Here's the information so far.

Dell PowerEdge 2900 (20 days old)
Dual Quad Core Processors
8 Gigs Ram
Windows 2003 Enterprise Server R2

I need to know if anyone knows a way for me to run 2 video cards in a new Dell PowerEdge 2900? I can install them (2 identical ATI 9250) fine. After I install the driver the server locks up when the Windows system is loading. I can remove one card or the other and Windows comes up fine. If I leave both Cards in I get a CPU Error E1410 and it just halts while loading. That's it. Hard kill and nothing works.

Things I have tried:

- Using an NVidia 6800 on a PCIe Slot - No driver support for Windows 2003 Enterprise Server which is odd as I have another Enterprise Server (Win2K3) running two 6800's just fine.
- Installing 1 9250 at a time. (Install card 1, reboot. Install card 2, reboot.)
- Removing all drivers and installing both cards at the same time.
- I have gone in and moved the IRQ's around for the SATA, USBHCI, NIC, PCI devices but no joy there. There is no evidence of an IRQ conflict.

Issues Worthy of Note:

Technically there is no PCIe support on the motherboard. If you want to run PCIe you have to order an adapter (which I did) couldn't get it to load the drivers for the 6800 and it just wouldn't load the ATI 1600 at all.

I think I'm completely screwed and this box will not work for me. I'm a developer that writes very high-end software and really needed the Power and expansion this hardware offered. If anyone can help me get two video cards working able to support 3 monitors then I'm good as gold and forever in your debt. If nobody can help I'm screwed and have to return the server (or start the process by tomorrow).

Thanks,

Rex Winn

Last modified: 33mins after originally posted --

-- modified at 5:40 Sunday 28th January, 2007

code-frog wrote:
I need to know if anyone knows a way for me to run 2 video cards in a new Dell PowerEdge 2900? I can install them (2 identical ATI 9250) fine. After I install the driver the server locks up when the Windows system is loading. I can remove one card or the other and Windows comes up fine. If I leave both Cards in I get a CPU Error E1410 and it just halts while loading. That's it. Hard kill and nothing works.

Does your motherboard have CrossFire chip? It's similar to nVidia SLI technology. If you have that chip, you should be able to run them both, and have each card output to 2 monitors. If your motherboard doesn't support it, then I don't know how to fix it other than buying one that supports crossfire, which I doubt you want to do.

Actually, I'm so in love with this rig I'd probably buy stock in apple Dead | X|

to get it working. The trouble is I'm not sure what kind of board it would take to support all the jazz on this thing. There is some serious jazz here.

Perc 5i/SAS RAID 10
Dual Gigabit NIC's
8 hot swappable drive bays.
48 gigs of memory (maximum)

I have no idea if I could find an upgrade motherboard that would work with all of it. If I could I might just have to get a job as a sheep farmer to afford it.

Sounds like the problem lies in the motherboard, but I'm no expert. How much would it cost to replace it with one that supports SLI?

Brad
Australian

- Christian Graus on "Best books for VBscript"

A big thick one, so you can whack yourself on the head with it.

code-frog wrote:
Anyone know of a single PCI video card that will connect 3 monitors?

Matrox makes a number of video cards that support 2 to 4 monitors. I think the MMS models are probably somewhat close to what you want - but they won't be anywhere near as powerful as the 6800's.

Oh man! When is Christmas again? http://www.studica.com/products/product_detail.cfm?productid=49768[^]

code-frog wrote:
Oh man! When is Christmas again?

Why do you need to wait for Christmas to treat your self to something you want? You are your own man, buy it. You could use your current graphics cards that you have installed for two monitors and that one for 4 more.

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So I have two budgets. I have my work budgets that has capital for this type of expense. Then I have my personal budget that gets distributions from the business in the form of payroll. For me Christmas can be whenever I choose as I have capital assets in the form of cash and credit with my financial institution. I dare say I could order 3 of these at once at the moment if I chose to. I don't choose to. With the money I've already put into this I'm going to be spending money on only necessities now and because of that I'm going to gather as much information as I can through a variety of channels and then make sure that I spend the most money I can to get the most features I can at the best value.

As you get older you will find that "buy it now, why wait" mentality is going to leave a gaping hole in your @$$ after your creditors get done extracting interest out of you. As an example my wife and I have owed a total of $40,000 on medical bills for our child. Most of that was on credit cards to feed her because our insurance didn't consider the $3000 a month we spent feeding her to be a medical necessity. The interest we pay on that will almost double what we pay back if we use the full 10 year term to do it. We are paying $400 a month more than minimum on it and as we pay off other related debt we take the extra and put on it as well.

I will advise you this. Debt is amazing and wonderful. Our child is alive because of it. Prior to her birth we had no debt and a credit score in the 800's. Because we were responsible we were able to secure the credit we needed to keep her alive, keep our bills current and make it all add up in the end. Our credit lines right now are nearly maximized but we have no open accounts. We closed them all except two (had our bank freeze them, just in case). We still have a credit score in the 800's and we have never been later than 60 days on any payment and we also called every single agency we were late at before the original due date to tell them we were going to be late ahead of time. We built good relationships and history with them where almost all of them give us 60 day payment terms without even flinching.

A lesson to you as you get older. Do it carefully and with cash. Someday you may have a child or something else who's life depends on your ability to be a good risk for creditors. Cool | :cool:

I was assuming you were almost rich because of the hardware you have. Laugh | :laugh:

I'm not the type of person who would get into debt, I always save every penny I can, it really adds up. Once I save a ton of money I treat my self to something nice, like the laptop I bought. After I bought it I still had enough money to pay for 6 months worth of car insurance and then some.

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No, not rich. After almost being sued a year ago from a major hardware failure and data loss I decided then that when I had a chance I was going to get something with a bit more stability. So here I am.

It's good to save. You never know what's coming around the corner of life.

If you can get support for one PCIe board, you can use Triple Head 2Go[^] to extend that to three monitors. But you would still need a fast graphics card to support the raster size, which means PCIe. I am afraid I don't know the issues with 2003 server, I run XP Pro for all my development because I only do workstation products, not server products. Sorry.

_________________________
Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau.
Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

How about 2 basic dual output pci cards? I wouldn't trust an adapter to work well for that anyway, if anything it's probably screwing up the timing on the cards causing the drivers to lock up. Another option is to get an older quad output pci card on ebay. They've been making them for years. You are going to get perfectly good GDI performance with any video card.

Using the GridView is like trying to explain to someone else how to move a third person's hands in order to tie your shoelaces for you.
-Chris Maunder

I am running two PCIe cards, with great success. Adding a PCI card to the mix breaks them all. So, my core advice is, go all PCI, or go all PCIe, don't mix them.

And, 2 dual head cards is a ton cheaper than a 3 or 4 head card. By a good $1000, I found.

Christian Graus - C++ MVP

'Why don't we jump on a fad that hasn't already been widely discredited ?' - Dilbert

Yes,

you can always go for a matrox, they offer QUAD display with one card without any problem.

Also they offer "triple head to go" that's a little box that will allow even your laptop to work in that way.

I've always had a matrox installed, they offer reliable solutions that work without any problem and have lots of tools that will help you to be more productive like being able to configure how you want to maximize, how the mouse will work...

PS: they are slightly more expensive than the cheap nvidia and ati graphics cards, but they are worht it.

Hope this helps.

I've just purchased a geek toy. USB Missile Launcher and the software for it keeps locking up. I've been to the manufacture website for updated software and it does the same thing.

My question is how would I go about writing my own software for this device? I have a dll that I can NOT register with XP and have tryed to add a reference to my new application but I get this error, "Reference to c:\my.dll could not be added. Please make sure that the file is accessible, and that it is a valid assembly or COM component."

Any advice on where to start would be great!

I'm listening but I only speak GEEK.

hello,
I'm capturing input from a USB webcam, do some filtering on the video and would need to output it to another, this time virtual, webcam device that I somehow need to add to the system (WinXP SP2). Even a .NET solution is okay with me (though I doubt there is some).

1) would I need a custom device driver to do that?
2) if not, which way should I go?

thanks

I've got a Windows 2000 machine with an ethernet card in it. Apparently the card was mfg'd after Windows 2000 came out as the OS has no driver for it (per Device Manager). Is there anyway I could get a generic driver just to get connectivity, and then get online to search for a specific driver?

Thanks,
DC

"Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed" - 2 Timothy 2:15

"Judge not by the eye but by the heart." - Native American Proverb

Identify the chip used and go to the manufacturer's website - e.g. Realtek, Marvell, Intel etc..
Often the driver works for any board with the chip.

Elaine Rose | [Rose]

The tigress is here Big Grin | :-D