NVIDIA TwinView - IBM T221 and 17" T750 Monitors

[Bipasha]

I'm trying to get TwinView to work properly on two different monitors (IBM T221 and IBM 17" T750). I have RHEL WS3 Update3 installed on my workstation (with a NVIDIA FX3400 Graphics Card). I setup my XF86Config file to include details for both monitors. TwinView works, but the maximum resolution that it scales up to is 1280x1024, which is the maximum resolution for the 17" monitor. The screen on the T221 also gets forced to 1280x1024 and not its maximum resolution, inspite of setting its required resolution in XF86Conifg. I want the T221 monitor to also scale to its maximum resolution. Could anyone please help?

Thanks in advance.

 

[jstreich]

can't be done with out a serious workarround... when in Twin mode both screens are the same resolution showing the screen at the highest possible res of the lowest quality monitor (unless set lower on purpose). With dual monitor mode (where the screen streached across two screans) you can have different resolutions on each monitor, but the color depth has to be the same. With dual heads your running two versions of the XServer and then you can have different resolutions and color depths w/o problem, but requires two keyboards and two mice... unless each runs as a seperate runlevel, in which case they both can't be active at the same time.

Or at least that how I understand the current state of affairs.

 

[Bipasha]

Thanks jstreich!!
I had almost stopped trying to make the two monitors to work properly together.

Anyways I have another problem - this time with two IBM 17" monitors in twinview! Both monitors are functioning correctly, with the right resolution and screens can be stretched across both monitors. But the second monitor (connected to second port on the Graphics card) GUI has weird colors. How can I fix this? Is it something to do with color depth? Appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Bipasha]

The system I'm trying to configure the monitors for has - Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS3 Update3 installed with NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400 graphics card using NVIDIA driver version 1.0-6629-pkg1.

 

[jstreich]

This is the document that I started with when trying to get my two monitor system up and running. It was written by one of my friends as he was setting up his system. Mine is with 2 NVIDA GForce 2 cards using their standard output.

How to do a multihead (two-monitor) installation
------------------------------------------------
Doing a multihead configuration is a matter of editing the XF86Config file.

I already had one monitor and one video card configured in my /etc/X11/XF86Config file:

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Monitor0"
        VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
        ModelName    "Z70"
        DisplaySize  320        240
        HorizSync    30.0 - 70.0
        VertRefresh  50.0 - 120.0
        Option      "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        Driver      "ati"
        VendorName  "Videocard vendor"
        BoardName   "ATI Mach64 3D RAGE II"
EndSection

So, after the first monitor, I added the second. Everything was pretty self-explanatory, and I obtained the
horizontal sync and the vertical refresh rate from the Vendor's website.

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Monitor1"
        VendorName   "Dell"
        ModelName    "Something"
        DisplaySize  320        240
        HorizSync    30.0 - 85.0
        VertRefresh  48.0 - 120.0
        Option      "dpms"
EndSection

And I needed to add the second video card, too:

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard1"
        Driver      "s3virge"
        VendorName  "S3"
        BoardName   "S3 Inc. 86c988"
        BusID       "PCI:3:5:0"
EndSection

I was able to look, in the display configuration in X, to see which driver was used by this specific video board. The
first time I tried this, I did not have the BusID line in there, and XF86 was erroring out and telling me where on the
bus the problem was. Using scanpci will tell you a lot of information, and the
BusID that you need is buried in there
somewhere. (It will return a line like: S3 0x0003 cardnum 0x05 f0x00 ... and that's where the 3:5:0 comes from, I
think.)

Now that those are set up, you have to tell X to use both screen, how to orient
them, and to use Xinerama so that the
two monitors work together and act like one.

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "Default Layout"
        Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
        [red]Screen         "Screen1" LeftOf "Screen0"[/red]
        InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
        InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
        InputDevice    "DevInputMice" "AlwaysCore"
        Option         "Xinerama" "on"
EndSection

Everything there was there before, with the exception of the Screen1 line and the Option "Xinerama" line. LeftOf/RightOf are how you tell XF86 which monitor is on which side.

Then, restart X, and everything should (hopefully) be working.

If it's not, my source was "Xinerama: Setting Up a Multi-Headed Display" pp. 76-79 in the Jan/Feb 2001 "Maximum Linux" magazine. You may want to consult that article for more background information.

More information about TwinView can be found at:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/archive/index.php/t-19812.html

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/archive/index.php/t-19936.html

(just googled now)

 

[Bipasha]

Thanks again jstreich!

I have only one Graphics card (with 2 ports) in the system, to which the 17" monitors are connected. According to an NVIDIA forum, the weird colors (greenish yellowish blue) are due to some bandwidth issue. I still couldnt get my second monitor to have the right colors.

Thanks