Vent : comments [A Bug's Life]

You don't say what OS you run. However, in the general case, multiple monitors are a solved problem and Just Work, provided you have the right hardware. You need either: (a) a graphics card with two monitor sockets; (b) a motherboard with a monitor socket on-board as well as the graphics card you have; (c) a second graphics card, which requires looking at your motherboard to determine what slots are available and matching that against available graphics cards.

Does your graphics card have any other output sockets? (I'm thinking of an SVHS or Composite video out.) These might be persuadable to use as a second output, but you'd need a monitor or TV capable of accepting the different signal, and you're unlikely to be able to drive it at high resolution.

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It's a bit blurry, but people who know what they might expect to see on a graphics card might recognise said bits:

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That round black one is probably SVHS but I'd need to see the arrangement of the pins to be sure. However, more hopefully, that beige one is a DVI monitor connection! (Dual link DVI-I, according to the pin layouts on Wikipedia, which means it does both digital and analogue.) Many flat panel monitors can accept DVI and have a similar connector - check yours. (You'll also need a cable, of course, which will normally have come with the monitor if it's supported.) If one of your monitors can accept the DVI, then you're probably sorted - possibly via a little tweaking in the control panel, I'd expect you can go multi-monitor straight away.

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Thanks - I don't recall the monitors coming with that sort of cable, but now I know what it's called I can do some more digging :-)

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Also there are adapters for DVI to VGA (I know, I bought one!) so you can use older monitors with graphics cards that have DVI ... need to know what the graphics card is (right click on desktop, properties, settings and see what the graphics card is ... or go through "My Computer".

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I'm sure I have one, not least because one came with that graphics card before I lent it to Bug. However it might be in any of eighteen boxes of computer Crapp and I suggest you see if anyone else has one more readily locateable.

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I'm WinXP. I have a second graphics card, the original one that came with my machine, but when I plug the second monitor in there's no signal.

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You may have to switch it on by right-clicking on the desktop, picking properties, settings and see if there's an option saying something like "extend my desktop onto this monitor" (at least that's what you have to do on my laptop!)

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What he said.

(And I probably have a spare converter too)

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On my first attempt, I have extended my desktop onto the same monitor twice :-) Must try harder.

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A Bug's Life

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