#269186 - 10/11/2005 00:02
Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
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pooh-bah
Registered: 12/02/2002
Posts: 2298
Loc: Berkeley, California
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Basically we want a high resolution slide show mounted on the wall. Well, four of them. Someone else is paying, but we need to keep the costs "reasonable". The 2405FPW is as low resolution wise as we want to go. The refresh rate will be on the order of 30 secconds.
What kind of hardware am I looking at to drive these things? I'm open to either windows or linux, I'd pick linux by default, but the rest of the offce would probably chose windows. Apperently the resolution is just out of the single link DVI spec, but it can be hacked to work. Can the "screen blanking interval" be changed under X? Am I gonna be able to get away with four of these attached to one computer, or should I start looking at two computers each driving two displays?
Matthew
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#269187 - 10/11/2005 01:09
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: matthew_k]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 19/09/2002
Posts: 2494
Loc: East Coast, USA
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Sounds like you'd only need two computers if the computers are limited to one DVI out each. Couldn't you get a motherboard with dual PCI-X and two dual-DVI video cards?
4x 2405FP...... Mmmmmmmmmmm...... But if that's the low end of your resolution spec, I'd hate to see what "moderate to high" is.
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#269188 - 10/11/2005 05:46
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: FireFox31]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 12/02/2002
Posts: 2298
Loc: Berkeley, California
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I can't really explain the details of why, but we want an auto-updating display of newspaper front pages from around the world. We can get the newspaper front pages as PDF's, but then we need to display them. Anything lower res than the 2405 doesn't seem to be readable with a the full front page of the NY Times displayed. I'm also looking at the 30" Cinema Display and (in theory) IBM's T221. Also perhaps one of the Native 1080p HDTV LCD's. You can see my test output in the various resolutions here: http://ih-ws1.berkeley.edu/~mkocher/newspapers/They're just default ghostscript output, I havn't looked into making them more readable at the same resolution yet. The T221 would be beautiful, but I can't imagine it would justify the price. (And the majority of people would probably be more impressed with 30" Cinema Displays anyways.) Matthew
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#269189 - 10/11/2005 06:21
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: matthew_k]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 12/02/2002
Posts: 2298
Loc: Berkeley, California
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Doing some more examining of the bmp's, it looks like ghostscript isn't nearly as good as Apple's PDF viewer at the same resolution. (Who'd have thought?) So the 2405's should look pretty nice. I'll do some more experimenting tomorrow.
Matthew
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#269190 - 10/11/2005 06:44
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: matthew_k]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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A 2405FP (or other 1920x1200 LCD) should be able to be driven off a well made single link DVI card. The monitor DVI port is only single link, so going dual link will not do you any good.
If you go with a PCIe solution for graphics cards, make sure the motherboard can actually deal with multiple graphics cards in a non SLI setup. Some may offer the 2 16x slots, but only work right with using SLI to a single monitor.
Apple's new PowerMac G5 systems do officially support up to 4 PCIe graphics cards with up to 8 total 23 inch displays (or 4 30 inch displays). Price wise,it might be the way to go since you don't need to worry about motherboard compatibility this way. Though if you go the Linux route on these, make sure support for the new system is available first, since the PPC Linux side tends to lag behind the new Apple hardware with radical changes in system design. Since no Mac before October shipped with PCIe, it may take a little bit of time.
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#269191 - 10/11/2005 09:04
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: matthew_k]
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old hand
Registered: 07/01/2005
Posts: 893
Loc: Sector ZZ9pZa
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The Matrox Parhelia has multi-head nicely sewn up with Dual-DVI connectors. I think you can even get triple-head on one card with the DVI -> 2xSVGA dongle. Comes in AGP, PCIe and even PCI versions, for ultimate cost effectiveness. If you want to really go high res, there are Dual-Link (PCI?) versions for those big displays which require 2 DVI inputs (Apple 30"), and a High-Res one when you need to see 9MP at the same time. As for Linux support, er, my G400 worked out of the box with Xinerama but with a Parhelia, I have no idea.
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#269192 - 10/11/2005 16:13
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: matthew_k]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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I assume you gave ghostscript the proper flags to tweak its antialiasing, right?
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Bitt Faulk
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#269193 - 10/11/2005 17:26
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: drakino]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 12/02/2002
Posts: 2298
Loc: Berkeley, California
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Quote:
A 2405FP (or other 1920x1200 LCD) should be able to be driven off a well made single link DVI card. The monitor DVI port is only single link, so going dual link will not do you any good.
Cool, that's good news.
Quote:
If you go with a PCIe solution for graphics cards, make sure the motherboard can actually deal with multiple graphics cards in a non SLI setup.
Yes, definitly important.
Quote:
Apple's new PowerMac G5 systems...
They're certainly beautiful computers, I suspect they'd only be a last resort though, as the price premium is pretty high, and I don't think we'll need all the horsepower.
Quote:
The Matrox Parhelia has multi-head nicely sewn up with Dual-DVI connectors...
Matrox is kind of the standard in multi-headed setups, aren't they? I havn't heard much about them recently, but it's good to see they're still out there. I didn't look through their web page completely but I didn't find a dual dual link card yet except for the high resolution one, which is $2k+.
Quote:
I assume you gave ghostscript the proper flags to tweak its antialiasing, right?
Not yet, but I plan to work on them. Currently their 256 colors, I probably need to run the tests at a higher bit depth too while investigating anti-aliasing. You don't hapeen to know the flags off hand? I can always google them.
Thanks for all the help.
Matthew
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#269194 - 10/11/2005 17:41
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: sein]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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Quote:
As for Linux support, er, my G400 worked out of the box with Xinerama but with a Parhelia, I have no idea.
I looked into this a while ago, and support for multi-DVI cards, even dual-DVI, under Linux is a bit hard to come by, especially if you don't fancy proprietary, binary kernel drivers. As you probably don't care too much about 3D performance, I'd just find a well-supported single-DVI PCI card and buy four of them (or three and one AGP, or whatever). X ought to just deal with it.
Or just abandon the idea of DVI -- if the 2405FPW is anything like the 2001FP, it'll lock absolutely pixel-solid to a good analogue VGA signal. (Plenty of dual-VGA cards are well-supported.) Especially as a wall display, no-one will probably ever notice it's not digital.
Peter
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#269195 - 10/11/2005 21:09
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: peter]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/06/1999
Posts: 2993
Loc: Wareham, Dorset, UK
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I thought there was a four-head Matrox card with good Linux support? The model escapes me at the moment. I'll have a look and see.
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#269196 - 10/11/2005 21:22
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: schofiel]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 25/08/2000
Posts: 2413
Loc: NH USA
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This one?
-Zeke
edit: nevermind, 1600x1200 max.
Edited by Ezekiel (10/11/2005 21:28)
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#269197 - 10/11/2005 21:25
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: Ezekiel]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/06/1999
Posts: 2993
Loc: Wareham, Dorset, UK
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Yep, that's the one. I remember liking the look of this one. Siemens was using this in banks of 4 (! Eeek! Cor blimey!) to do the imager screens of an MRI not so long ago.
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One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015
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#269198 - 10/11/2005 21:37
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: Ezekiel]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 12/02/2002
Posts: 2298
Loc: Berkeley, California
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Quote:
edit: nevermind, 1600x1200 max.
Well, the DVI spec tops out at 1600x1200, and you're supposed to need dual link dvi to go higher. This doesn't seem to be the case in practice, so it might work. It's certainly an interesting card worth checking out.
Matthew
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#269199 - 10/11/2005 21:58
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: matthew_k]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
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Another solution is to use a separate PC with each display. Then, if you're displaying one newspaper image per display, you can make them interactive -- linking to the newspaper's web sites for more details. Of course, if you want something seamless, you can use an array of LCD projectors or, if you're got the budget, just buy something ready to go.
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#269200 - 11/11/2005 04:14
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: matthew_k]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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Matrox has never been the standard for anything actually.  It's a wonder they've managed to survive this long. Both NVIDIA and ATI have been doing dual head with full resolution support on both heads for years. Both companies have also been doing dual DVI for quite a while (for consumer-prices mainly on the Mac). ATI's cards (Mac and PC) have supported 1920x1200 digital output with reduced vesa timing for a few product generations. 4 30" Cinema displays, each rotated 90 degrees would make just about the most impressive setup at any price. How you'll get that setup today is another matter. I'm pretty sure the new ATI X18xx series cards support dual dual-link - but I'm not sure if the specific models supporting that feature are already available in stores. On the PC front you're going to find a lot of motherboards have a single 16 chanel connector and then a bunch of single channel. Perhaps one 4 channel. At least the motherboards I've seen however, use short connectors for the lesser channels. Apple's new systems, even though they offer 16,4,8,4, have full-length connectors for each slot. This enables you to stick a standard PCIe graphics card into any slot and run it at the maximum speed for that slot (the 16x board will just run slower in a slower slot). If you're going to go with Dell panels you can get away with 1 PCIe board with dual DVI output and one or two standard PCI boards (with either dual DVI or single DVI). You're not going to be taxing the PCI bus displaying a PDF at that resolution. Your CPU will bog down well before any of the graphics chips even flinch. My personal recommendation would be to use a previous generation G5 or G4 machine to run this setup. With 1 AGP card providing two digital outputs and two PCI cards providing one each. It will probably be the most economical in the long run and a snap to set up (a few minutes to just connect everything together before turning it all on). Running Mac OS X 10.4.x you'll easily be able to rotate alll the displays. If running 10.3.x only if the three video cards are ATI's will you be able to rotate. Bruno
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#269201 - 11/11/2005 07:46
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
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Quote:
On the PC front you're going to find a lot of motherboards have a single 16 chanel connector and then a bunch of single channel. Perhaps one 4 channel. At least the motherboards I've seen however, use short connectors for the lesser channels. Apple's new systems, even though they offer 16,4,8,4, have full-length connectors for each slot. This enables you to stick a standard PCIe graphics card into any slot and run it at the maximum speed for that slot (the 16x board will just run slower in a slower slot).
I've seen pictures of a wacky PC motherboard which whilst having short slots didn't actually close off the ends on some of them so you could plug a longer card in with part of the edge connector exposed. Looked really reliable and secure...
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#269202 - 11/11/2005 11:49
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: hybrid8]
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addict
Registered: 20/11/2001
Posts: 455
Loc: Texas
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Quote:
30" Cinema displays
I've been playing around with the Mac Mini I have and it is pretty slow. Was kind of considering getting some kind of Mac with more snap. What is something worth getting without spending too much? Thought about coupling it with the 23 Cinema display.
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#269203 - 11/11/2005 12:50
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: blitz]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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A G4 (Tower) shouldn't set you back too much. The mini and iBooks are pretty much the slowest systems Apple has available. Though they were given a little speed bump recently and should be more than adequate for mild use. A number of people here have them and as far as I know, are quite happy. I wouldn't consider a mini to do software development on of course - unless you like going out while waiting for compiles. But your typ[ical email and web browsing would be fine.
A number of Macs have been configured from the Apple store with too little default amount of RAM. Make sure any machine you're using has at least 512MB to get a more realistic taste of its usability.
I'll ask this question to the guys on the beta-testing forum I run to see what they suggest. They should also be able to guestimate a an average resale price you should expect to find.
Bruno
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#269204 - 11/11/2005 14:21
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
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Quote:
I wouldn't consider a mini to do software development on of course - unless you like going out while waiting for compiles. But your typ[ical email and web browsing would be fine.
A number of Macs have been configured from the Apple store with too little default amount of RAM. Make sure any machine you're using has at least 512MB to get a more realistic taste of its usability.
I used my Mac mini for a fair bit of software development (C#/mono and ObjectiveC/Cocoa) and it wasn't a problem with regards to speed. It does have 1GB of memory though, with the 256MB it came with even Finder + a couple of Firefox windows made things too slow for my liking.
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#269205 - 11/11/2005 18:34
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: andy]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
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Quote:
I used my Mac mini for a fair bit of software development (C#/mono and ObjectiveC/Cocoa) and it wasn't a problem with regards to speed. It does have 1GB of memory though, with the 256MB it came with even Finder + a couple of Firefox windows made things too slow for my liking.
Don't let the real Mac fanatics hear you say that. When the Mac mini came out there was huge arguments over the amount of memory bundled with the mini and they kept arguing that 256MB is plenty. The new revision mini comes with 512MB and 2x VRAM.
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#269206 - 11/11/2005 19:33
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: hybrid8]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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Quote:
4 30" Cinema displays, each rotated 90 degrees would make just about the most impressive setup at any price. How you'll get that setup today is another matter.
If there's a card coming out that'll even do two 1600x1200 single-link DVI screens portrait under Linux, without falling back to completely unaccelerated X, I'm all ears...
Peter
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#269207 - 11/11/2005 19:38
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: peter]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
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You might want to check out the commercial X server Accelerated-X. It does up to 16-heads.
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#269208 - 11/11/2005 19:53
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: wfaulk]
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veteran
Registered: 19/06/2000
Posts: 1495
Loc: US: CA
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Would something like this help? 
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#269209 - 14/11/2005 10:27
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: hybrid8]
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addict
Registered: 20/11/2001
Posts: 455
Loc: Texas
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Bruno,
I upgraded the Mini to 1GB (we had some memory laying around). It's a lot better than 256K. Next question... will the Mini support the 23 Cinema Display? Is that too much for the Mini graphics card. My idea would be to try it with the Mini for a while then perhaps upgrade to the G4 after January 1st.
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#269210 - 14/11/2005 20:31
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: blitz]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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Quote:
Next question... will the Mini support the 23 Cinema Display?
From the Apple tech specs on the mini:
DVI video output for digital resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 pixels; supports 20-inch Apple Cinema display and 23-inch Apple Cinema HD display; supports coherent digital displays up to 154MHz; supports non-coherent digital displays up to 135MHz
VGA video output (using included adapter) to support analog resolutions up to 1920 x 1080 pixels
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#269211 - 14/11/2005 20:53
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: ricin]
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veteran
Registered: 19/06/2000
Posts: 1495
Loc: US: CA
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This seems interesting. Not sure if it would be applicable to what you're doing, but it is sort of on the same topic so I figured I'd paste it here.
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#269212 - 14/11/2005 23:31
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: drakino]
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addict
Registered: 20/11/2001
Posts: 455
Loc: Texas
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Quote:
From the Apple tech specs on the mini:
Yessir. I had seen but was concerned because I've had a lot of trouble at work with at Samsung 243T. Had to switch to VGA to get it to work even wtih the ATI 850.
Anyway... thanks.
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#269213 - 15/11/2005 01:09
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: blitz]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 12/11/2001
Posts: 7738
Loc: Toronto, CANADA
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The Samsung 24" should have worked fine with the X850 card. Or even older cards. If the problem was panel noise then you have a checkbox in the Displays control panel (not at a Windows box right now so I can't tell you which tab it's on). The option toggles DVI support between coherent and non-coherent displays (difference between TMDS receivers made by Silicon Image and Texas Instruments).
And as Tom mentioned, the Mac Mini will work fine with the 23" Cinema Display.
Bruno
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#269214 - 15/11/2005 14:22
Re: Quad 2405FPWs? Can such a thing be done?
[Re: hybrid8]
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addict
Registered: 20/11/2001
Posts: 455
Loc: Texas
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Ordered the 23" display with the idea of a different Mac later. I actually have the X800 card. I have the 243T back on the DVI and a 172N on the AGP port. The 243T is just unstable and periodically blacks out (then recovers).
SmartGart is set OFF.
The Display Tab doesn't really have much to it... just lists the displays.
Under Options the following are checked:
Re-activate all warning messages
Enable ATI taskbar icon application
Show ATI icon on taskbar
Reduce DVI frequency on high-resolution displays (I've tried this both ways)
Alternate DVI operational mode (i've tried it both ways)
Unchecked is Disable quick resolution feature.
It looks good when it's running but occasionally blacks out for a few seconds and then recovers.
I read somewhere that some cables are not that great. Could this be the problem?
Edited by blitz (15/11/2005 14:29)
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