My goal is to get two flatpanel monitors working on a Windows XP, P3 computer with two video cards, for use as a Bloomberg terminal.
The system we use now is a Dell GX270 running Windows XP Pro SP1, with the latest Bloomberg (2003-11-08?) software. The GX270 is our highest-end PC, and it also has built-in audio capability which our Bloomberg users want.
Now the users want Bloomberg's dual-monitor option. We had ditched our Bloomberg proprietary dual-monitor flatpanel setup a while ago, due to leasing costs.
At first I explored adding another video port to the GX270, which has built-in VGA. Alas, its PCI slot requires a card that has a smaller height than the industry standard. The small form factor (SFF) case is the culprit. My management is stingy and has ruled out getting the proper SFF-sized PCI video card (if it even exists).
So, I grabbed an IBM 300 PL (model 6565) with plenty of room for PCI cards. It's a P3 system instead of a P4, but the users should see little difference. The 300 PL 6565 has default video in the AGP slot. So, I plopped in a Cirrus Logic 5440 card, tweaked the BIOS setup to make sure I had the video on the right VGA port, and loaded XP.
To make a long story short, nothing worked. I tried: 300PL6565+PCI+AGP, 300PL6565+PCI+PCI, load XP before, load XP after, another 300PL6565, more VGA cards (ALL unfortunately use the CL5440 chipset) ... then tried an IBM 300PL model 6562 (built-in video).
What happens in ALL cases is that in XP's Device Manager, one video system is disabled: Code 10 (device is unable to start).
The best indicator I got was on the model 6562, which had a built-in S3 Trio 3D video system. I was able to get XP to work on one or the other ... but I coudn't get XP to work with both as the same time; one had to have the Code10 error. There must be some compatibility problem.
My boss has thrown up his hands and has decided to buy a modern video card, on the theory that our video cards (all about 1994-1996 vintage) are too old to be compatible with dual-video in XP. However, after some googling, I haven't confirmed that video BIOS versioning is a requirement for dual-monitors.
Do you have any ideas to help me? Will a modern PCI video card solve the problem? The best computer I can get for this task is the IBM 300 PL.
The system we use now is a Dell GX270 running Windows XP Pro SP1, with the latest Bloomberg (2003-11-08?) software. The GX270 is our highest-end PC, and it also has built-in audio capability which our Bloomberg users want.
Now the users want Bloomberg's dual-monitor option. We had ditched our Bloomberg proprietary dual-monitor flatpanel setup a while ago, due to leasing costs.
At first I explored adding another video port to the GX270, which has built-in VGA. Alas, its PCI slot requires a card that has a smaller height than the industry standard. The small form factor (SFF) case is the culprit. My management is stingy and has ruled out getting the proper SFF-sized PCI video card (if it even exists).
So, I grabbed an IBM 300 PL (model 6565) with plenty of room for PCI cards. It's a P3 system instead of a P4, but the users should see little difference. The 300 PL 6565 has default video in the AGP slot. So, I plopped in a Cirrus Logic 5440 card, tweaked the BIOS setup to make sure I had the video on the right VGA port, and loaded XP.
To make a long story short, nothing worked. I tried: 300PL6565+PCI+AGP, 300PL6565+PCI+PCI, load XP before, load XP after, another 300PL6565, more VGA cards (ALL unfortunately use the CL5440 chipset) ... then tried an IBM 300PL model 6562 (built-in video).
What happens in ALL cases is that in XP's Device Manager, one video system is disabled: Code 10 (device is unable to start).
The best indicator I got was on the model 6562, which had a built-in S3 Trio 3D video system. I was able to get XP to work on one or the other ... but I coudn't get XP to work with both as the same time; one had to have the Code10 error. There must be some compatibility problem.
My boss has thrown up his hands and has decided to buy a modern video card, on the theory that our video cards (all about 1994-1996 vintage) are too old to be compatible with dual-video in XP. However, after some googling, I haven't confirmed that video BIOS versioning is a requirement for dual-monitors.
Do you have any ideas to help me? Will a modern PCI video card solve the problem? The best computer I can get for this task is the IBM 300 PL.