First post, by SamBushman
I've been experimenting with a Magma PCI Expansion box for a couple months. This device basically extends the cardbus port of a laptop to provide a PCI slot for adding expansion cards to the laptop. I've been trying to use it as an eGPU of sorts for legacy portable computers. I've been working with a P3 era Sony Vaio with integrated Intel graphics (operating on an internal AGP bus). It has some significant limitations: 8MB vRAM, poor legacy VESA support. I've been experimenting with different PCI graphics cards to try and break through these limitations. My OS of choice here is Windows ME. I have hit 2 major classes of issues:
1. The installed PCI card conflicts with memory ranges being utilized by the integrated graphics.
2. The card works, but some applications run on the primary display.
For MS-DOS applications and some games I'd like force them to display on the PCI card. This way I can take advantage of the additional features the card provides (better VESA support, expanded vRAM, newer D3D support, ...). Is there any way to do this? Unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to simply disable the integrated graphics device via Device Manager (that option is missing or greyed out). Attempting to remove if from a second Hardware Profile results in the system hanging when attempting to start Windows with the configured profile. BIOS also offers no options to disable the integrated graphics. Does Windows' DOS implementation allow me to set the target display device? Does DOS have a way of configuring this? Is there a way for me to force Windows to change what device is primary (Registry changes, driver hacks, etc)?
Thanks for any advice,
Sam