MassMultiples LCD Screen

Rackemup writes: "For those days when you're thinking to yourself, 'Y'know, one monitor just doesn't cut it anymore... I wish there was a way to hook up a bunch of LCD screens to my computer. Check out the MassMultiples website. Now you can hook up two, three, four or more 18" lcd screens to your pc! Custom configurations, low footprint, and not a price to be found anywhere on the web site. Like anyone cares how much they would cost ..." Update: 05/04 02:17 by H : I actually saw their quad system last week -- it looks really, really good -- quality work.

Comments

I'll take....

[Matrium]

I'll take that custom job of 8 18" displays please, yes with the infrared keyboard and mouse... a camera? Sure why not! Um, I'll take them in a metallic green color please. What do I need them for? Why to play Quake III, Unreal, and Diablo 2 when it comes out of course. That and look at the most porn I can in the smallest amount of time.

Re:I'll take....

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be cool to play Quake with at least five of those flat screen monitors mounted so you can see up, down, and to the sides as well as looking forward. If you could see your feet you wouldn't have to take faith that your on-line player won't fall off the edge of the cliff you're trying to skirt.

Multiple panels would be useful in the work environment as well. My ideal office would look like one of those maintenance pod spaceships in 2001, the one with the claws and stuff. My desk would have all these glowing monitors everywhere, beeping and pinging and projecting an ethereal video glow on my face. It's especially important for the sound effects to be shrill and peircing and the video look like slide screen projections. At least I think so.

-Derrick

Pricing?

[seebs]

I saw no pricing info on the web site. Anyone got some?

Re:Pricing?

[cgori]

I asked a while ago. Here is some info

5) Currently, they all come in black, however we can change the color to your liking, we will need either CMYK # or Pantone #. An extra fee of $400 U.S per unit will be added, unless your order is big, then we can discuss discount.

4) Depends on the number of units ordered, all the 18" line is ready to be shipped with a two weeks from day of order.

3) Single 18" has 1280 X 1024 resolution, if you meant aggregate resolution, then dual 18" will display 2560 X 1024 horizontal. For the triple 18", total aggregate resoultion will be 3840 X 1024

2) Dual 18" is $6,695.00
Triple 18" $9,995.00
Dual 15" is $2,995.00 (four weeks lead time)
Triple 15" $4,895.00 (also four weeks lead time)
ALL PRICES ARE IN U.S

1) If the sun graphics cards have VGA (2 X 15-pin D-sub for analog RGB) then it will work.
You will need a dual video card or two separate video card.

Multiple monitors...

[mmaddox]

...are pretty neat. I've been running two 19" iiyama monitors on a Matrox G400 MAX (under Win 2000) for a few months, and, for a developer, it's downright indispensible. App on one side, debugger on the other, or multiple source files simultaneously...it's really spoiled me to the point that I could never go back to a single screen (which means I'm nuts whenever I'm on the laptop). By far the most interesting thing, however, is the gaming capability that the monitors provide. Multiple views are supported in some games (mostly Microsoft ones: FS2000, Baseball 2000, etc.), but, unfortunately, not too many companies are providing such support, and the display falls back to the single, PRIMARY display. Still, I think this has been the most enjoyable upgrade that I have ever made. If you've got the desk real estate, you can get the CRTs pretty cheaply...of course, if you've got the deep pockets, go get that quad.

Re:Multiple monitors...

[linuxonceleron]

The iiyama monitors use Mitsubishi's DiamondTron Natural Flat tube. I have an NEC 17" flatscreen made with a DiamondTon NF and the quality is spectacular. The IBM and SGI monitors are AFAIK nothing but high priced rebadged Sony monitors, which use Sony's Flat Display Trinitron tube. The differences between the FD Trinitron and DiamondTron NF are very slight, from what I remember when I was buying the NEC, the DiamondTron was a bit darker and had richer colors, but the Trinitron might have been a little sharper. I have seen the iiyama VisionMaster 450, and it is amazing, the IBM and SGI are probably no different than the Sony monitors. If you want to check out the tube difference, most stores carry the Sony FD line and the NEC FE/FP line. All of the monitors that you mention are of the top 1% of monitor quality anyway, so any of them should be fine for whatever you plan on doing with them.

Re:Multiple monitors...

[technos]

I'm working on a NEC flat tube now. At 1600x1200 it gets a bit fuzzy, but the color range is good. The single SGI I have stays 100% crisp (you can see crisp pixels at 16x12 on a Matrox), but the colors can get slightly washed. Imperceptable unless you just had a look at the NEC. Thanks!

Re:Multiple monitors...

[technos]

I work for a leasing company, and have my pick of year old equipment. We have a dozen skids of unused IBM monitors from the Air Force coming in Thursday and a shitload of SGI on hand. I'm not terribly worried about warranty ;) Just wondering whether the 'state of the art' was so much terribly better than what I am accustomed to..

Other multihead options

[victim]

Matrox has standard dual cards and a line of semicustom quad cards. Good luck getting the quad, ours have been on order for months, but they are out there.

The last I saw XFree86 didn't like the duals, but the quad cards are just four single controllers glued down with a PCI bridge and should work fine with XFree86.

It really isn't that difficult....

[47Ronin]

Is it? I mean, isn't it the same as hooking up a bunch of monitors to your computer? All you need is one video card per monitor. Let's say I have an Apple Cinema Display 22" LCD hooked up to my Power Mac G4's AGP DVI port. Then I can add another video card (say, an ATI Xclaim VR 128) in a PCI slot and hook up some LCD to that. Then add another video card (like a Voodoo3 3000) and hook up some odd LCD to that. Oh yeah, add one last video card (a Matrox dual-display card) to the last PCI slot and add TWO LCDs to that! that's five LCD monitors! Then just casually turn on the Mac and all five LCDs turn on simultaneously, with the primary LCD showing the Mac logon screen. When the desktop and icons appear, you'll see the default pattern appear on the other four monitors. Open the Monitors control panel and you'll see five monitors.. just lay them out in whatever way you want, pick a primary menu screen, set the resolutions/colors for each. Heck, pick a desktop picture for each one too while you're at it. Hint: try opening Photoshop and creating a desktop picture that spreads across five monitors! Easy, huh? No damn DLLs or other crap. The Mac will automatically detect the manufacturer hardware signature from each LCD and set its capabilities (no files needed). Like I mentioned, it's really not that difficult; just depends on what system you're running on and if you have the money to buy all these LCDs =)

-----
Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }

Re:It really isn't that difficult....

[psmX]

Multiple monitors are VERY old hat. The Mac II could have a maximum of 7 monitors connected at once. This was back in 1986. If there were dual spigot Nubus cards one could have gone higher. With the PCI based Macs one could connect at least 14 monitors (expansion chassis and a bunch of dual (quad?) spigot cards). M$ introduced this a new feature in 1998. Can Linux do this? What is new and interesting about the vendor is that they are marketing this. This has been done for such a long time it is interesting that someone is seeing this as something that is about to take off. Multiple Monitors have been used by professionals for a long time but does this mean that these guys think the concept has a broader appeal? -PSM

Re:It really isn't that difficult....

[The Mayor]

This isn't a question of, "Can Linux do this?". It's a question of, "Can the X Window System do this?". The answer is yes (for both questions, I might add).

Use the Accelerated-X server. They sell one that handles multiple monitors. I haven't checked it in a few years, but I had multiple monitors under Linux back in 1996. I think XF86 does it, too, but it's a pain in the ass to configure.

For the record, I think this was introduced to the X Window System way back in the late 80s. I'm getting old, so my memory ain't so great, but it seems like I remember seeing multiple monitor setups udner X as early as '88.

Re:It really isn't that difficult....

[technos]

Setting up multihead under XF86 isn't terrible. Run the X binary with the --configure flag, alter one or two lines (screen placement) and copy the autogenerated config to /etc/X11..

No problem!

Re:It really isn't that difficult....

[AJWM]

seems like I remember seeing multiple monitor setups udner X as early as '88.

We were running some multi-headed machines back in early 1987, but if I recall right X treated each of them as a different display (foo:0, foo:1 etc). This was under X10, not X11. Might have been with X11 that came the ability to treat them as two views onto a single virtual display.

Now this is a "So what?"

[crovira]

I've been running with a 17" a 15" and a 21" monitors hooked up to my Mac for years.

I look forward to installing OS X (and getting a real OS,) on my G3 but, while flat screens are neat 'cause they don't eat your desktop for breakfast and leave you balancing a tablet on your knees, multiple heads is old hat to anybody in the Visual arts.

Get over it guys.

Next miracle, please :-)

dual monitor is as old as PC...

[Frederic54]

back in 1990, i had a 386SX16, and 2 video cards, one vga 256k, and one hercules (that i replaced with a CGA one) and two monitors, and i used Turbo Debuguer with the 2 displays, pretty cool, my app running on the vga, and the debuguer on the hercules :)
it still work i think, the point is to have a videocard buffer on B800, and one on B000 iirc which is the B&W one, so there's no overlap, even on bios, one on C000 and the others on i don't remember.
--
BeDevId 15453 - Download BeOS R5 Lite free!

Another old article.

[joeytsai]

This article was posted almost a year ago. Archived story.

Re:Another old article.

[pkj]

Sheesh, you think that we've either run out of geek news or there is a plot to shen slashdot by submitting old stories...

-p.

Re:Another old article.

[ywwg]

If we have trouble with old articles now, what will happen in ten years when the net is overstuffed with documents? How are we going to know what was made when, and if it's out of date? Sometimes there is a date on a website, but others are long dead, and it's difficult to tell how long they've been sitting around. Imagine the same slashdot stories being posted years apart because no one remembers the originals? Perhaps links will simply die? How many web pages from '96 still exist today? Should we be archiving web pages, lest we end up with a web memory of only 4 years?

Re:A joke and a rant

[jabber]

It is certainly News for Nerds, though I don't know if it's Stuff that Matters. After all, $10k for the 3x18" panels? I haven't got that kind of cash.

But I am getting a bit worn down by the Kuro5hin and theGEEK trolling. Slashdot has bigger and better news than either of those sites. Sorry.

K5 tends to have pretty obscure suff, and theGEEK isn't much better. Typically, those sites are either on /.'s heels with 'real' news, or they make a *splat* when they feature a 'hit'. At least on a slow day, /. makes a big old THUD. :)

Now, that's not saying that /. is fine, it's definitelly gotten very diluted since 'the buyout'. I'd love to know what our esteemed hosts do with their (paid for) time, since the content was much better back when it was all a labour of love. But at least /. is a lot more sophisticated than either of the two upstarts who keep trying to advertize in the trailing edge of people's posts here.

Bah! Humbug!

[jabber]

Yeah, multiple screens. Nifty.

It's no Fakespace.

Re:No Prices

[pete-classic]

When it comes to bargaining, whoever says a number first loses.

In retail, you always lose. (have you ever been haggled UP in price at walmart?)

Many companies that are Quasi-retail (like these guys) try to hold the price close, so they can make as much as they can.

This is not surprising, really. With this type of product you can't pop into "the other guy's" store to see what he charges, so you have to be careful trying to sense what the market will bear.

I am sure that they feel that the business that they lose (yours) is outweighed by what they would lose (in prices and business) if they did "up front pricing." (with apologies to GM Service Plus.)

-Peter



Slashdot cries out for open standards, then breaks them.

multiple monitors under win98

[geekpress]

Yes, yes, the shame of it: I still run Win98 as my desktop machine.

One of the cool features of Win98 was the ability to have more than one monitor. (It was about time they added that feature.) So I got an extra network card and another 17" monitor, and I had more desktop space than I knew what to do with.

However, there was a serious problem: my mouse wasn't responding quickly enough. It was taking too long to get between the monitors.

Now, being a former Mac person, I immediately went to go find something like "TurboMouse" for Windows, which would speed up my mouse past the MS speed limit. No such luck. (Anyone know of such a utility?)

This speed limit problem was made all the more difficult by my IBM trackpoint keyboard. That keyboard was wonderful for my carpal tunnel (no more braces), but the movement is pretty sluggish. My right-hand pointer finger was now in pain most of the time.

Anyway, so now I'm back to one monitor and a Cirque keyboard that has a trackpad underneath the arrow keys. It's okay, but I'd give anything for a really responsive trackpoint keyboard and two monitors again.

Okay, okay, not anything, but maybe $200 or so.

-- Diana Hsieh

OK, BUT!

[Bilestoad]

Multiple monitors are GREAT. I developed on a Mac 9600 a few years ago with dual 21" monitors. It didn't leave much space on the desk but it is really easy to get used to following the mouse from one window to another, and monitor real estate is like drive space, you can never have enough.

What do Mass really give you? I can't see this going too far.

>MASS Multiples ship as a complete solution: No need to find, purchase and assemble proprietary mounting arms, discreet LCD monitors, video cards and special driver software from various vendors to arrive at a solution

i.e. It comes as WE like it - we hope that's how YOU like it.

>The modular design provides easy set-up, servicing and upgrading

How could it be any simpler? It still has one VGA connector per display. Is sharing a power cable that much of an advantage?

>Each display is able to tilt and book to achieve optimal viewing position

i.e. same as if you bought discrete monitors

>Superior image clarity, brightness, and color reproduction result from the use of the best LCD and electronic components in the market

Go out and choose the best yourself. What they think is best might not match what you personally prefer. Monitors are very subjective, just like speakers.
(And if you want to know my personal choice, it's the Sony GDM-F500. As flat as any LCD, half the price, and no restrictions on which resolutions look good. 100Hz refresh isn't really hard to take.)

>Analog interface facilitates use with most video cards

Not a particularly unique feature.

>Apple Macintosh compatible

Neither is this.

>MASS will protect your monitor investment by providing a liberal trade-up policy that provides credit on any returned MASS multiple for the purchase of your next MASS display system or display system addition

Can't see this business model working - what good is this if they go out of business through a too-liberal upgrade policy?

>MASS will arrange 3rd party leasing to make your purchase as enjoyable as working in front of our monitors

No big advantage there. Lots of places will lease you anything.

>All monitors can be purchased separately or bundled with a high performance multi-output display adapter

Let me guess which one that would be! Not too many dual head cards out there. And any number of places will sell me video cards and monitors at one time. Are they suggesting their combinations are CHEAPER? I doubt it.

Re:A joke and a rant

[kuro5hin]

I'm getting awfully worn down by the trolling that goes on "in the name of" Kuro5hin here too. I *really* wish it would stop. It's always nice when someone mentions K5 in a good way, but I hate appearing in the trolls. For the record, they do not represent my site.

FWIW, though, have to disagree with you about being on /.'s heels with news. Typically it takes much longer on K5 between "story breaks" and "story goes up on page", due to moderation. Meanwhile, any registered user can see it though. Take a look back a bit-- for stories that K5 and /. both cover, we're first at least as often as they are, and I suspect more often. I'm not sure what you mean about *splat*'s though. That was a little unclear.

--

Doom did something like that

[DragonHawk]

I remember YEARS ago, at a Macworld Expo, GraphSim demoed F/A-18 Hornet (which was mac-only at the time) running on a Quadra 840AV (so this was about 1993) on four monitors ...

Cool. id Software's game "Doom" (remember that?) did something like this, too. If you had two extra PCs, you could position them left, center, and right, network them using IPX, and run the same game on all three. About as close to VR as first-person-shooters have gotten on the PC. :-)