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Quad-Monitor cards?

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First post, by CelGen

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Last night I had this ridiculous idea.
See if I can strike a deal with some business or school disposing of a large lot of identical CRT monitors (there has to be a few stragglers left) and build a massive 16-monitor setup. Straight crazy, but think of the bragging rights. 🤣

Anyways, I'm trying to think of how to drive them all. Not expecting stunning 3D performance or full 32-bit color. Your average PIII/P4 normally has an AGP slot and five PCI slots. No way will we get an AGP card that can support that but what about for PCI? I know Matrox is/was king for multi-head cards but who made decent PCI cards that could drive up to four monitors each? All I can seem to find are dual head cards or extremely oddball things that there's no way I could afford or find four of.

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Reply 1 of 7, by Stojke

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Matrox has cards that can drive 8 monitors. It also has older 4 monitor Millennium model cards. Try finding G450 or was it G550.

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Reply 2 of 7, by vlask

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All of them i know are for PCI. PCie-1x are made by matrox, ati (firemv) and nvidia (Quadro NVS), but not sure how many monitors can drive - but these are expensive (too new). Depends on what OS you want to use. For older will be cheaper get PCI retro cards. Another problem might be drivers - all these makers had some optimized software for proper multimonitor support. These might be lost forewer. Old cards have native support in win2k or xp, but dont know how good is multiscreen support.

Cards on mine site -
http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/cards/item/71 … twinfinity-quad - 4x 4 S3 Trio64V2/DX
http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/cards/item/73 … stb-mvp-pro-128 - max 4x riva 128 (with addon pcb i dont have)
http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/cards/item/51 … nimo-pro-4-port - 4 3Dlabs Permedia 2
http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/cards/item/21 … matrox-g200-mms - 4x matrox g200 with tv
http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/cards/item/20 … 00-quad-with-tv - 4x matrox g100 with optional tv
http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/cards/item/62 … ati-firemv-2400 - 2x Radeon X600

Remember to buy only cards with cables, because almost all these cards are using unique cable reductions and without them are cards uselles. If youre into some basic 3D, try to get some older PCI-e models. These may be also cheapest along with matrox productiva g100.

Not only mine graphics cards collection at http://www.vgamuseum.info

Reply 3 of 7, by CelGen

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Well the Matrox G200's don't seem to be that terribly uncommon, as are their pigtails. They totally lack 3D accelerations which is fair enough and right now there's a guy on ebay selling a small mountian of the cards for $30 each. That looks like a good approach and a good starting point. Now the hard part. Finding 16 monitors of matched brand, model and screen dimensions.....in 2015.
At least calibrating all that is piss easy with the use of a Spyder.

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Reply 4 of 7, by vlask

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CelGen wrote:

Now the hard part. Finding 16 monitors of matched brand, model and screen dimensions.....in 2015.

That should be doable only by buying them at some company selling refurbished PC - they mostly have xx amount of same monitors and PCs.....

Not only mine graphics cards collection at http://www.vgamuseum.info

Reply 5 of 7, by Stojke

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Take it slowly but surely. Eventually you will complete the setup. Better than to piss a lot of money.

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Reply 6 of 7, by candle_86

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well its a shame you want to do P4, because you can do this with modern GPU's

Reply 7 of 7, by CelGen

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well its a shame you want to do P4, because you can do this with modern GPU's

For something like this, I wanna do it on a dime and because all I need is 2D, I'm not really interested in doing it on faster and more expensive cards. 😉

That should be doable only by buying them at some company selling refurbished PC - they mostly have xx amount of same monitors and PCs.....

Used to know some people well in the recycling industry. Once in a blue moon they took in what remained of an old office or school computer lab so there was dozens of identical (and equally aged) monitors to pick from. I could throw them a few hundred for a skip and I should be set.

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