thanks plumber for the knowledge.....canyonman for the links, and of course gnome as always for stopping by....appreciate your time.......i was really surprised at the flexibilty given from the Dual and Quad Matrox cards in terms of OS.....Its rare and non-existent in other vendors to find a PCI function along with a card that will work with both XP & 98.......very very cool
Here is question....please check out this link: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3402054057&category=3762 Can you run "breakout" cables or Y cables (what are they exactly called--- that come with Matrox 2 head that allows Quad support) from any video card......Or is it that the Matrox 2 head is "special" I am assuming that if you ran this Y split cable from just any old retail or cheapie video card, it would dramatically cause problems for video performance???????????????????????
I doubt you can plug a splitter into just any old card and expect it to work. The card's driver must support the splitter. If it did, it would be noted as a feature and a splitter would come with the card purchase. Suggest you go carefully here. Getting fouled up with incompatible video drivers is one way to throughly trash your setup. Best you can do is to have all your cards run from the same manufacturer.... better still, the same driver. If I were you, I'd be looking at something like that and not messing around with the mix-and-match.
WARNING!! -- WARNING!! -- WARNING!! DO NOT MIX THESE CABLES WITH ANY OTHER CARDS! NOT ONLY MIGHT YOU TRASH THE OPERATING SYSTEM, BUT OTHER HARDWARE AS WELL. That is all.
It's amazing some of the things people will just try. Obviously, they haven't had that one traumatic experience yet of trashing their machine. After that, they will procede more carefully.
I run J-Trader on a separate XP Home machine because it frags the hell out of the HD. For my primary trader, Win2000. Works great, no problems.
Gnome, You stated, that you - " run 4 single ATI cards... All-in-Wonder 128 PCI + 2 Xpert 128 PCI + Xpert 2000 Pro AGP. They all work together. In fact, they all use the same Rage Pro driver. You could probably buy the 4 cards online for about $120. 16mg/display is plenty for a trading machine." I agree. That's what I've been doing for several years on Win98. Had no trouble with it. But now I attempted to change over to a Winxp full install and I can't get it to recognize more than the AGP card and 1 PCI. I was expecting XP to recognize it all with no trouble. Not to be. What is the exact configuration of your 4 card system? Like what mb, etc and how did you get it all set up? Would there be a better chance of getting it to work with W2K do you think? Thanks.
You say you've been running the same video cards on W98 as I have (do you mean exactly the same cards)? I ask because in ATi's case, the cards I ran previously on W98 were not supported on W2K and I had to buy new. My trader is a Dell Dimension. Apparently they "have their MBs manufactured to Intel Specs...", so they have told me. Chipset is 845, on Win2000. At one time, I'd heard that XP Home would run only one video card. Later, I've heard some say they're running multiple cards on XP Home. I don't know. Maybe XP Pro is an answer?... along with W2K. Presuming your "AGP + 1 PCI" is working on the "1st" PCI slot... maybe try the AGP + #2 PCI slot. I did have a bad SIMM once... maybe PCI connectors can be bad?? Otherwise, check with video card mfr for compatibility issues.