Dual Monitors for Haiku?

Can 2 displays be used with Haiku for an extended desktop? Tj

Short answer yes, longer answer: Depends on what video card you have. I have dual monitors running off an ATI Radeon card. You still display only one desktop at a time but now your desktop can be twice as wide or twice as high in pixels.

Otherwise, works the same as before.

I have a PC with a VGA and a DVI output on the video card, I have 2 identical monitors hooked up to those 2 outputs on the video card.
All I can get is mirrored monitors ā€¦ identical thing on both monitorsā€¦ How do I set it up to for 2 displays to work as ONE big unified workspace?

I bought an ATI VisionTek 9250 on eBay for very cheap. It came with a monitor splitter adapter, 1 for VGA, one for digital out. I plugged it in to an old eMachines D6505 machine that I use for Haiku. After booting, the digital connection displayed Haiku, the VGA connection said ā€œInput not supportedā€.

What card are your using and what is the resolution range?

Do you happen to know about any ATI cards that can do 4K and are also compatible with both Haiku & OSX Mavericks and <=$100 or so? HDMI is okay for 30hz, DP would be a bonus.

There is an answer to the question in the thread below yours in the user support forum titled ā€œDual Monitor set up?ā€!

Basically you can do multi-monitor where the desktop is spread over the monitors only with some old radeon (non-HD) cards and some others like Matrox and maybe a couple of others.

Mirroring is available on most of the radeon HD cards I think.

Not sure about 4K screens but to be honest you wouldnā€™t want to run haiku on a 4k screen anyway as it doesnā€™t do any scaling and everything would be teeny tiny. Not sure if the UI scales up if you increase the system font sizes, thatā€™s the only option I can think of. Probably some of the newer radeons will work with 4k, maybe even VESA if the modes are reported correctly.

My old Radeon 7000 card can do extended desktop in Haikuā€¦

http://development.pistooli.com/?p=372

So does the Thinkpad X31

http://development.pistooli.com/?p=237

I have a couple of X31 machines and they are great for this. However I thought Iā€™d mention that you said in your blog post that they have intel graphics, but actually they use radeon. AFAIK the haiku intel driver doesnā€™t support dual head output on any cards.

(Unfortunately many x31 machines suffer from a nasty component failure (http://kuzyatech.com/fixing-an-ibm-thinkpad-x31) and both of mine are currently dead)

[quote=Munchausen][quote=pistooli]

So does the Thinkpad X31

http://development.pistooli.com/?p=237

[/quote]

ā€¦However I thought Iā€™d mention that you said in your blog post that they have intel graphics, but actually they use radeon. ā€¦[/quote]

Trueā€¦ that was the reason I posted it hereā€¦ :slight_smile: Sorry for the misinformationā€¦

Where can i check if the dual head are supported? i am in a optimus intel/nvidia right now.

Short answer: it is not. Only some very old drivers (non-HD radeon, maybe Matrox) will handle it.

Long answer: open Screen preferences. If you donā€™t see a way to select multiple monitors and configure their resolutions there, then your driver does not support it.

Oh and this is a hard thing to make, i am just curious cause i am trying to get one experimental thing to practice my skills there, thats whya i want to know how the multiheade work, i was reading the ā€œrandrā€ for linux but now i am curious about what is managing this, or where to see drivers what work and compare with the not working oneā€¦ maybe i will not be the person who implement it but certainly i will learn something new in haiku.

Well, one needs to dig into driver development and graphics card programming. In the drivers, there is already some idea of different display devices, but we will just pick one and use it. So the code needs to be completed to handle two or more displays, and then it needs to be wired to the interface used by screen preferences to enumerate displays.

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Well, one needs to dig into driver development and graphics card programming. In the drivers, there is already some idea of different display devices, but we will just pick one and use it. So the code needs to be completed to handle two or more displays, and then it needs to be wired to the interface used by screen preferences to enumerate displays.

Exactly where can i start to dig, cause i am a little lost there cause dont know where to start.

https://git.haiku-os.org/haiku/tree/src/add-ons/accelerants/radeon/multimon.c looks like a possible place to start with.

I tried one of the old video cards that was thought to support dual monitors but it did not work for me.

Iā€™m looking into supporting the current Matrox driver.

If Matrox, we need the Matrox ā€œDualhead Setup 0.04ā€ software from the Bebits-related archives for Matrox G200-G550 cards. Youā€™ll need DVI-to-VGA adapters for those cards.

Cards with TV-out port handle:
640x480 and 720x480 for NTSC; 768x576 and 720x576 for PAL (use TV-output adapter cable (composite video and S-video, 1-foot)).

Otherwise:

  • Analog, main display: 2048 x 1536
  • Analog, secondary display: 1600 x 1200

Matrox G550 PCIe cards are abundant on eBay. Youā€™ll want to use the PCIe x16 motherboard slot for card testing. Using the monitors in ā€˜stretchedā€™ or ā€˜cloned/mirrorā€™ modes
is through the tool I mentioned (for now).

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Sad :(, what model was?

Mi tower are dead now, thats why i just slow my haiku intense investigation, this laptop are very awful with your suggestion, and it is just plugged to a acer monitor, the tower was an ati 4300ā€¦ :confused: :frowning:

I donā€™t think you need ā€œdualhead setupā€. The support is built into our screen preferences already. At least thatā€™s how it works with my good old Radeon 7000.