Dual Head/Monitor Set Up

[Fleabus]

Win98SE
32MB G400Max
VGA1: ViewSonic P817 21" shadow mask

VGA2: ViewSonic 17PS 17" shadow mask
VGA2: 33" Panasonic GAOO TV.

1)Both monitors are DDC compliant. Will the DDC/PnP of the Max detect and auto setup BOTH monitors?

2)I would like to have both the 17PS and TV on VGA2. Do you know of a quality mfr of manual 1VGA IN to 2 VGA OUT switchers?

3)How long is the cable on the VGA to S-video/composite adapter?

Answers to any of the above would be appreciated.

[agallag]

I can only answer #3. The cable splits right after the vga connector, and the S-video and composite cables are about 9" each.

You'll definitely need extension cables.

[Genom]

OK. In response, #1: Yes, both will detect and setup, but your usually better off tweaking the matrox settings a bit and squeeze out some more Hz on that refresh rate, as win98 usually has very conservative refresh rates.

#2: Not a good idea. Mainly since your TV would be getting a VERY high frequency signal msot of the time, your likely to burn something out. And a VGA switcher will run you way too much moeny for a decent one. Better off just deciding on one really.

#3 has been answered

[Fleabus]

Genom: I think you may have misunderstood what I want to do in #2 above. The kind of switching I want to do is an A/B type of manual switcher. I would not be feeding a signal to the VGA2 monitor and TV at the same time. The path would be: Matrox VGA2 OUT to the single VGA IN on an A/B switcher. The switcher has two selectable VGA OUTs. Manually selecting "A" would result in a connection to my 17PS second monitor and manually selecting "B" would result in a connection to my TV via the VGA to S-video adapter. Only one connection at a time can be live, not both. I'm just trying to find a mfr who makes good switchers of this type as I want to minimize the signal loss that extra switching always introduces.

[Diddl14]

After boot the Matrox configuration panal is different depending if the Y-cable is connected or not. You either can set the TV-out parameters or you can set the max. monitor resolution (no refresh rate!). So probably a simple VGA a/b switch might do the trick for #3 but it seems to be needing a reboot for the G400 to detect the type of output. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong.