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Is there a Dual Head PCI video card?

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Reply 21 of 31, by The Serpent Rider

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It's commonly known that G400 had only AGP variants. But only when it comes to normal video cards, which I've pointed out as trivia.

Sorry if I offended you .

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Reply 22 of 31, by CraigAB69

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So, can you guys suggest a PCI dual monitor card that has dual monitor drivers for Windows 3.1?

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Reply 23 of 31, by Cuttoon

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CraigAB69 wrote on 2022-05-25, 10:00:

So, can you guys suggest a PCI dual monitor card that has dual monitor drivers for Windows 3.1?

Don't think there are any. Most were happy to afford one monitor.
The few cards that existed were probably used with special drivers for CAD software...

Be sure to report back here if you find a 3.1 solution!

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Reply 24 of 31, by rmay635703

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Cornerstone should have had dual head video cards and I used them under windows 3.1 and 95

I had a “mono” cornerstone card with a 19” screen that also had an onboard color VGA device with a separate output.

In normal use it would switch back and forth or drive both screens with the same image (albeit one in b&w)

I would think given it did have dual heads that you could get both on at the same time though I never used it that way.

Cornerstone ram strange resolutions and refresh rates so attaching the card to a multi sync screen might have strange side effects.

Used to be fairly simple to pickup old cornerstone graphics cards cheap on eBay
I ended up with ISA in the VLB/PCI era because I was too cheap to buy one of their later cards (and compatibility for my curb find screen was questionable)

Reply 25 of 31, by weedeewee

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Isn't a better question here, Does Win 3.X / DOS have multi vga output support ?

While there were even ISA cards with multiple VGA outputs, I doubt there was support for DOS or win 3.X. Just some specific programs like CAD/CAM design
Especially since DOS is single tasking and win 3.x is barely more than that.

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Reply 26 of 31, by rmay635703

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weedeewee wrote on 2022-05-27, 17:28:

Isn't a better question here, Does Win 3.X / DOS have multi vga output support ?

While there were even ISA cards with multiple VGA outputs, I doubt there was support for DOS or win 3.X. Just some specific programs like CAD/CAM design
Especially since DOS is single tasking and win 3.x is barely more than that.

In 3.x
If the dual screens are treated as a single frame buffer or as a color/mono scheme yes definitely
But these devices were high end for specific windows applications like banking and financial institutions or for programming. CAD existed within Windows 3.x (and dos) but from what I could tell wasn’t the target for the big fixed frequency screens in the x86 space.

User friendliness wasn’t really a thing and the current display manager concept simply wasn’t even thought about.

The device I owned assumed you needed a big mono screen for lots of columns viewing financials or double page graphics publishing at high resolutions while the vga output would just go to a cheap 12” VGA screen for anything that had to have color output for review.

The mindset and use case was pretty specific and the “usual” way the cornerstone setup worked was that you switched between screens depending on what you were doing, though you could leave both on displaying the same image.

DOS and Windows VGA compatibility was native though the monochrome rendering of dos 256 graphics left something to be desired, in Windows 3.x though 256c programs looked astounding (for grayscales)

Cornerstone appeared to treat its dual head offerings as a way of saving money and as a convenience to the user so you could have the best of both worlds, compatibility, color if necessary and crystal clear high resolution if you didn’t need color.

The belief was that 2 screens was cheaper and less eyestrain than a comparable giant hi res color monitor, but things changed rapidly so that the market for high end mono didn’t last long and even fix freq in general died out as being stupid

Reply 27 of 31, by cyclone3d

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I can't imagine not having multiple screens for work or even just at home.

2 is the bare minimum and I would be much happier with 4 or maybe more.

I wonder if it would be possible to make a universal piece of software to add multiscreen support for Windows 3.x.

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Reply 28 of 31, by darry

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Respectfully, my feeling is that it would be much easier to run Windows 98, with its dual monitor support opening the door to using almost any dual output video card with Windows 98 drivers (or even using a single output card with the onboard video), than trying to find a solution for Windows 3.1 .

Of course, this would not be an option for the OP if his use case implies using software and/or hardware that will not work with anything newer than Windows 3.1 .

Reply 30 of 31, by darry

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rmay635703 wrote on 2022-05-28, 00:26:

Well, that is interesting. Unfortunately the drivers are not archived or easy to find on the Internet . So OP will likely need to source a card with a driver disk . Cheapest one I saw on Ebay was about 150 $US and likely did not include drivers .

At least there is hope as the hardware can be found and someone might still have drivers .

Reply 31 of 31, by rmay635703

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http://www.verycomputer.com/418_13a0ab3f8d6a88a2_1.htm

If you could find the engineer (Ross Bro) from there in living condition:0

As for me I remember dual screen going back since the dawn of time but can’t say any of the strange brands were memorable

My folks Futura 100 photography system (circa 1988+)
was a dual screen setup of a sort one was primarily for operating the machine (stole off an Amiga), the other screen was a larger older video monitor we used to drum up business showing folks live as we took pictures followed by the picture preview showing what images we captured in a rapid rotation