It works (dual display)

[Jeff Hester]

My friends a picture is worth more than a thousand words. So much time put into this.

[JR Holmes]

Now we need the "thousand words" telling us all how you managed to
solve the problem. After all, the thread discussing it went on quite a
while.

On Mar 7, 2012, at 10:41 PM, Jeff Hester <jwhe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> My friends a picture is worth more than a thousand words. So much time put into this.
>
>
>
>
>

> [On the move with iOS.]
> <photo.JPG>
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[mosslack]

On Mar 7, 2012, at 11:44 PM, JR Holmes wrote:

Now we need the "thousand words" telling us all how you managed to
solve the problem. After all, the thread discussing it went on quite a
while.

On Mar 7, 2012, at 10:41 PM, Jeff Hester <jwhe...@gmail.com> wrote:

My friends a picture is worth more than a thousand words. So much time put into this.

Exactly.

Just a message from mosslack...

______________________________

GG <+> TBIE <+> Hack List <+> Alt-OS

[Jeff Hester]

Absolutely. The first piece was to ditch the 7200GS and move to an
8400GS. I purchased the ZOTAC ZT-84GED2M-HSL from NewEgg. $10 after
MIR.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500220&Tpk=zotac%208400gs

Once that was done I made very minimal changes to the DSDT for the
GA-G41M-ES2L. Most of the changes were related to changing the NVCAP
setting for memory size to 256 MB instead of 512 MB.

The final change was to look up the graphics card device id and put
that in NVDANV50Hal.kext (located in /System/Library/Extensions). You
have to "Show package contents" before you can add it to the plist.
Once that change is made I ran KextUtility to let it fix permissions
and regenerate the Extensions.mkext.

One thing still strange is that during computer boot up the
information is displayed in just about 2/3 of the DVI connected
display. The VGA connected display receives no signal. The same
happens as when Mac OS X is booting; the boot screen with the big
Apple uses the same amount of screen space (a large black border).
But as soon as the displays fades out and the login screen comes up
the other monitor comes right up too. Logging in provides two
connected displays!

Thank you to all who helped get me here. :)

[pete...@cruzio.com]

> Absolutely. The first piece was to ditch the 7200GS and move to an
> 8400GS. I purchased the ZOTAC ZT-84GED2M-HSL from NewEgg. $10 after
> MIR.

Well, ditching a 7200GS is also a way to get EM64T kernel support, as the
7200GS is stuck with i386.

But, all 8400GSes do not automatically work. The latest DDR3 versions are
not supported by NVDANV50Hal (but the DDR2 versions are).

[mosslack]

On Mar 8, 2012, at 11:57 AM, Jeff Hester wrote:

Absolutely.  The first piece was to ditch the 7200GS and move to an
8400GS.  I purchased the ZOTAC ZT-84GED2M-HSL from NewEgg.  $10 after
MIR.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500220&Tpk=zotac%208400gs

Once that was done I made very minimal changes to the DSDT for the
GA-G41M-ES2L.  Most of the changes were related to changing the NVCAP
setting for memory size to 256 MB instead of 512 MB.

The final change was to look up the graphics card device id and put
that in NVDANV50Hal.kext (located in /System/Library/Extensions).  You
have to "Show package contents" before you can add it to the plist.
Once that change is made I ran KextUtility to let it fix permissions
and regenerate the Extensions.mkext.

One thing still strange is that during computer boot up the
information is displayed in just about 2/3 of the DVI connected
display.  The VGA connected display receives no signal.  The same
happens as when Mac OS X is booting; the boot screen with the big
Apple uses the same amount of screen space (a large black border).
But as soon as the displays fades out and the login screen comes up
the other monitor comes right up too.  Logging in provides two
connected displays!

Thank you to all who helped get me here.  :)

Interesting. I believe the primary display (the one you see the actual low level CMOS, etc. info on), is decided by the card itself. On my 9400GT's, the VGA connector is the primary. It is the only display which any video is seen until such time as the OS has established control to the point of initializing the displays, first a blank white screen and then the desktop display finally arrives and all screens come up mostly at the same time. Another interesting note is the single HDMI display on my system never goes dark, but displays a blank blue screen until such time as it too turns white while the displays are initialized. All of the other screens are dark, but receiving a signal as the power indicator glows blue instead of yellow. 

[Jeff Hester]

Yes, I'm interested in trying to run in 64 bit mode to see what
performance increases that might appear.

I'm not sure how one would know which card is supported or not until
it is tried. The card that I purchased and installed is DDR3 based
and not DDR2.

This card also has HDMI output. Does this mean I could hook up three
displays or does the HDMI have the same as data as the DVI?

-- Jeff

[mosslack]

On Mar 8, 2012, at 1:19 PM, Jeff Hester wrote:

Yes, I'm interested in trying to run in 64 bit mode to see what
performance increases that might appear.

I'm not sure how one would know which card is supported or not until
it is tried.  The card that I purchased and installed is DDR3 based
and not DDR2.

This card also has HDMI output.  Does this mean I could hook up three
displays or does the HDMI have the same as data as the DVI?

-- Jeff

AFAIK, you are limited to 2 displays per card, at least that is the way it works on my 9400GT cards. The interesting thing about HDMI, at least on mine, is in switching between two different displays. For example, the one monitor on mine which is hooked up to two different systems I have setup as HDMI and VGA. This makes it possible to switch between two different computers while booting. IOW, if you have them hooked up to VGA and DVI, the monitor will auto switch to the system which has live video. That makes it very difficult to watch a system boot and get into the CMOS settings as the display wants to switch back to the other system which has an active display. This may depend on the monitors, but that is the way it works on my Asus VW264H monitors.

[mosslack]

It was kind of difficult to explain, so I made a short minute and a half video to demostrate what happens on my system with 6 monitors. when it boots up. You can view it here if you wish:

http://youtu.be/Eps6SqOMw8g

(Note, it's still processing right now, but should be live shorty)

[mosslack]

On Mar 8, 2012, at 2:01 PM, mosslack wrote:

It was kind of difficult to explain, so I made a short minute and a half video to demostrate what happens on my system with 6 monitors. when it boots up. You can view it here if you wish:

(Note, it's still processing right now, but should be live shorty)

Well, that didn't work too well. I think YouTube doesn't handle the DV format very well. I reuploaded in MOV format and it' working now at the link:

http://youtu.be/IIO2sBT8Aaw