Visual art disply on older machines...

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Weidenfeller
  • Start date Start date
J

John Weidenfeller

Sorry for cross posting but I figured someone in these groups might be able
to point me in the right direction or more importantly save me from wasting
too much time.

So I have an old 400Mhz Machine I'm getting from a friend
I have 2 Monitors and a projector as well as I just bought a lot of 5 PCI
graphics cards on Ebay.

Now what would like to do is hook all this up with a dedicated machine for
video/visual display for parties.

So basically have the mobitors and projectors scattered around (and
decorated of course) showing video clips and what would really be cool would
be to have a mic on the machine to take the sound in from the party and have
the visuals dynamically adjust based on the beat.

I know winamp used to have a plug in for this but I never got it to reliably
work.

So my questions are if I load this machine with windows 2000 would this work
or is there not enough power??? Since its a dedicated machine if I remove
stuff could I get it to work or will I need to try Linux or something??? Or
is it pointless and should I just wait till I get a Gig machine or
greater??? Which will be a while since I am trying to pay off bills. :-(

Also any othere useful fun ideas would be great.

Thanks and sorry for the cross post, but I figured these groups might have
someone whose done this sort of thing.
John
 
John Weidenfeller said:
Sorry for cross posting but I figured someone in these groups might be able
to point me in the right direction or more importantly save me from wasting
too much time.

So I have an old 400Mhz Machine I'm getting from a friend
I have 2 Monitors and a projector as well as I just bought a lot of 5 PCI
graphics cards on Ebay.

Now what would like to do is hook all this up with a dedicated machine for
video/visual display for parties.

So basically have the mobitors and projectors scattered around (and
decorated of course) showing video clips ...

snip <
Click to expand...
Off the shelf Windows can only control 2 standard graphics cards, for more
than 2 you need specialist display cards and software.
The 400MHz processor isn't fast enough to decode mpeg2 movie clip in
software and play it smoothly on a single monitor never mind multiple,
presumably different, displays.
 
John said:
.... snip ...

Thanks and sorry for the cross post, but I figured these groups
might have someone whose done this sort of thing.
Click to expand...

Then you could simply have set follow-ups to the group from which
you are posting, and avoided generating a long interminable
thread.
 
Off the shelf Windows can only control 2 standard graphics cards, for more
than 2 you need specialist display cards and software.
The 400MHz processor isn't fast enough to decode mpeg2 movie clip in
software and play it smoothly on a single monitor never mind multiple,
presumably different, displays.
Click to expand...

Who told you that? I'm fairly certain that the limit for Windows (since
98SE?) was 8 or 16 displays - if you had enough slots.
 
From sci.engr.lighting ...

John Weidenfeller said:
Sorry for cross posting but I figured someone in these groups might be able
to point me in the right direction or more importantly save me from wasting
too much time.

So I have an old 400Mhz Machine I'm getting from a friend
I have 2 Monitors and a projector as well as I just bought a lot of 5 PCI
graphics cards on Ebay.
Click to expand...

OK but bet you dont ahve 5 spare slots on mobo.
Now what would like to do is hook all this up with a dedicated machine for
video/visual display for parties.

So basically have the mobitors and projectors scattered around (and
decorated of course) showing video clips and what would really be cool would
be to have a mic on the machine to take the sound in from the party and have
the visuals dynamically adjust based on the beat.

I know winamp used to have a plug in for this but I never got it to reliably
work.
Click to expand...

You need a spare slot for a soundcard, mebbe you want a more modern version
of winamp, or use the computer as the audio source, a few media players will
take external audio I think...
So my questions are if I load this machine with windows 2000 would this work
or is there not enough power??? Since its a dedicated machine if I remove
stuff could I get it to work or will I need to try Linux or something??? Or
is it pointless and should I just wait till I get a Gig machine or
greater??? Which will be a while since I am trying to pay off bills. :-(
Click to expand...

Its an audio and not hugely intense graphics processing application, even
though winamp can go heavy in processor use, would think a 400 Mhz should
do the job.
Win98/me/200 will support up to 9 monitors its just getting the free slots.
Have plan B for when thing BSOD`s on you.

HTH
Adam
 
Noozer said:
Who told you that? I'm fairly certain that the limit for Windows (since
98SE?) was 8 or 16 displays - if you had enough slots.
Click to expand...
Who? Windows fairy of course.
You're almost right.
I always believed that it was one primary and one secondary adapter only.
Searching through the MSKB it transpires that Win98, 98SE and Me can support
up to 9 monitors, 1 primary and 8 secondary. These can be connected to
multiheaded or individual graphics cards. WinXP can control up to 10
monitors and I could not find a limit for Win2k but its definitely more than
2. It also appears that under Win2k all monitors have to run the same
resolution whereas under XP, 98, 98SE and Me all can have different
settings.

I have plenty of old 1 to 4MB PCI graphics cards so will have a play later.
 
SO I now have reorganzed some of my equipment and have been left with an
800Mhz PIII to set up with multiple monitors.

I have an ATI Rage 128 card in it now and can chose 2 from the following
list of cards:

2 S3 Virge/DX
1 Diamond Stealth 64Dram
1 S3 Trio 64V+
1 S3 Trio 64V2DX

So I have 3 available slots for video cards so I was going to use the ATI
card as well as two of the above PCI cards. Though I only seem to get one to
work. The scond card shows up in the hardware info page with a yellow !

So I read somewhere that you can't have more than 1 S3 Trio card but wans't
sure if thsi was my problem or if there was some way around it.

Thanks
John
 
John Weidenfeller said:
SO I now have reorganzed some of my equipment and have been left with an
800Mhz PIII to set up with multiple monitors.

I have an ATI Rage 128 card in it now and can chose 2 from the following
list of cards:

2 S3 Virge/DX
1 Diamond Stealth 64Dram
1 S3 Trio 64V+
1 S3 Trio 64V2DX

So I have 3 available slots for video cards so I was going to use the ATI
card as well as two of the above PCI cards. Though I only seem to get one to
work. The scond card shows up in the hardware info page with a yellow !

So I read somewhere that you can't have more than 1 S3 Trio card but wans't
sure if thsi was my problem or if there was some way around it.
Click to expand...
Select your OS and type "multiple display" in here and learn:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;kbhowto&sd=SO&ln=EN-US&FR=0
 
John Weidenfeller said:
SO I now have reorganzed some of my equipment and have been left with an
800Mhz PIII to set up with multiple monitors.

I have an ATI Rage 128 card in it now and can chose 2 from the following
list of cards:

2 S3 Virge/DX
1 Diamond Stealth 64Dram
1 S3 Trio 64V+
1 S3 Trio 64V2DX

So I have 3 available slots for video cards so I was going to use the ATI
card as well as two of the above PCI cards. Though I only seem to get one to
work. The scond card shows up in the hardware info page with a yellow !

So I read somewhere that you can't have more than 1 S3 Trio card but wans't
sure if thsi was my problem or if there was some way around it.
Click to expand...

John, take a look around this site, and at their forums:
http://www.realtimesoft.com/multimon/

I've found it to be the most useful resource for multiple monitor systems out there. Good Luck.

Jon
 
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