When you are running short on screen space, it may be more cost-effective to add a second monitor instead of upgrading from, say, a 15" monitor to a 19" monitor. Usually you will end up with more screen space for less money with a multiple monitor machine than if you had bought a single, bigger monitor.So far I have set up a dual-monitor computer on Windows NT4 Service Pack 3, using identical dual Matrox Millennium II 8MB video cards and 17" monitors. It runs terrifically. For more information, please click here.
The LG-Scan Hydra Dual monitor research page has sparked some interest, and a few e-mails inquiring about Windows 98 dual-monitor setups. At the time I wrote the page I did not have any information on dual-monitor 98 machines, however lately I have deduced some information about it that I think may aid those who are interested in it.
Windows 98 will let you run dual monitors. It seems that video card manufacturers are starting to add multi-monitor support to their drivers, too. For example, in a recent review by FastGraphics of the Diamond Viper V550 based on the Nvidia Riva TNT chipset mentions in passing under "Optimized for Windows 98" that it "supports multi-monitor display...". Since this review is referring to an AGP card, the second card could not be identical, although the card does ship in a PCI version. It is usually possible to use two different types of video card on your 98 machine, and furthermore, since Windows supports multiple devices with different drivers like different SCSI adapters in the same machine, it also support multiple video card drivers, optimized for each video card. Of course, it is important that you make sure that you install the drivers specific to each video card, as generic drivers can work poorly for some video cards, such as the Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro.
NT4, while it can not run dual monitors with any two cards, works okay with certain cards that have hardware support for dual and quad card configurations, most notably the Matrox Millennium video card series. With the Millennium I, you set a jumper on the cards that disables VGA (dos) mode display on all but one card (so in a dual-monitor system, VGA would be enabled on one card and disabled on the other). The Millennium II automatically detects the second card (or third and fourth cards), and does not require you to change any jumpers at all. Then when you get into NT4 you go to the display settings and adjust the resolution slider to enable display on the second monitor. What it does is essentially doubles the resolution in one or both coordinate directions (X and Y, horizontal and vertical), depending on whether you have dual or quad monitors. So a machine that you run normally at 1024x768 resolution with a single monitor would suddenly be able to display 2048x768 overall (if you had two monitors side by side), 1024x1536 (if you stacked two monitors vertically), or 2048x1536 (if you had four monitors in square 2x2 configuration). This is pretty much handled in hardware, and the Matrox Millennium video card driver has support for it and simply detects how many cards you have installed in your machine. It is a truly plug and set and play installation. The Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead works similarly, although only needing one card. Unfortunately, despite its built in dual monitor support, NT still sees it as one big desktop, so one has to deal with windows splitting across two monitor ocassionally. I used to believe that dual monitors would work about the same on a Windows 98 machine, but now I know that Windows 98 actually has settings for each monitor, separately adjustable.
On NT4, one needs identical video cards - but with Windows 98 it is possible to have a specific driver for each card, and work fine (to my knowledge).
Additional, more detailed information on Windows 98 dual monitors may be found at the following URL: Multiple Monitor Support in Windows98. However, for NT4, you will still find the best information on the Wireball NT4 Hydra Dual Monitor Workstation page.
If you have additional questions, you may e-mail the Webmaster. Please include detailed information about your situation, as I like to learn about people's dual and multiple monitor setups. Thanks.
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