Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 2 Jan 1997 12:50:32 -0800 (PST) | From | Trevor Johnson <> | Subject | Re: Video card questions... |
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> First: Why would you WANT more than 1 video card? no real need.
I've seen this used to advantage under AUX (several years ago): one monitor could be dedicated to X11 and the other to MacOS, for instance. Many graphic artists who use the Macintosh use more than one monitor. Two monitors are cheaper than a single monitor with the same real estate. Suppose that Linux supported USB keyboards and multiple displays. Then two, three, maybe four people could work around one workstation, taking advantage of Linux' stability and multitasking abilities, with a quite small incremental cost per person. How many offices have a printer on everyone's desk? Printer switches and networked printers are ubiquitous. Multiheaded PCs will become common once businesses figure out that similar savings are possible with them. Upcoming versions of Microsoft Windows will likely support this. If Linux does not, it will slip farther from acceptance as a desktop OS in the cubicle zone.
> Second: PCI is much faster than VLB.
I'd say it depends, but this has been debated elsewhere.
> Fourth: My suggestion is to use the PCI card and not do anything, you > can't merge the VRAM to 2 megs....
From the GGI FAQ ( http://synergy.caltech.edu/~ggi/GGIFAQ.html ):
+ Because SVGAlib and X are user-space programs, there are many things that are not currently possible to do with the video card. For example, it would be very useful to be able to use the video card's unused video RAM as a fast buffer cache, but this is not currently possible since the kernel has no control over the video card under SVGAlib or X. ___ Trevor Johnson <trevor@jpj.net>
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