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Is Monitor Spanning Possible on an iBook?

Posted by Cliff on from the two-heads-are-better-than-a-clone-of-one dept.

bcassell asks: "I just recently (a few days ago) purchased an iBook. It's the base model (600mhz, 12" screen). After playing with it for a while I decided to plug it into my nice 21" Dell CRT, only to find that the iBook ONLY supports display mirroring (so I'm stuck at 1024x768). Well, knowing that the video card in my iBook is an ATI Radeon mobility which, by ATI's specs, supports monitor spanning, I decided to do some research. I found several discussions about the subject, and one person who even claimed to have monitor spanning working on his iBook in Mac OS 9. So does anyone know of a way to get monitor spanning to work on an iBook in Mac OS X? Or, if not, where would a very proficient coder/hacker like myself, who has very little Mac OS X experience, find information to attempt a hack like this?"

4 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Ouch! by fm6 · · Score: 0, Troll
    Even though I'm a PC person, I'm forced to concede that the Mac hardware is far superior. If I made my choices based solely on hardware sexiness (not an option for most of us), I'd refuse to use anything else.

    But jeez, the software. For years, they've been stuck with an antiquated, non-multitasking OS with a bloated, overdesigned API. Now, among the few little things I found to admire about MacOS were monitor spanning and adherence to the Apple HUIG. But apparently OS X supports neither! That's just sad.

  2. Re:How about how to do it in XFree? by brarrr · · Score: 0, Troll

    1. Apple did this deliberatly. If ibook users had the same capabilities as powerbook users, where would the $ go?

    2. The hardware can do it. So write your own OS....

    3. Software could do it, but they disabled it in firmware, or so I'm told.

    4. Some realllly smart guy could make it work... either that or a few people w/ too much time on their hands that want to redo the firmware.

    Good luck

    --
    to email me: take my /. handle and append .net preceded by charter.
  3. Mac OS X by NotSoNewBe · · Score: 0, Troll

    I do rember one thing that was mentioned when OS X came to life. It's BSD with a cute interface. Gee, I wonder if ctl + alt + Backspace kills the X server? Gee, If it uses X then all that you need to do is hack the config files to load the server you want. Then hack the another file to get the system to think the server is the one that MAC. wrote. (You know that Mac programmers allways has a watchdog thatlimits you to use only MAC system software.) Geez, Is this getting complicated? That is why Mac has the small market share that they have. People like to mess around with their OS. Mac Says No! We say I Paid for it, It's mine! Even that rich guy in Redmond barrowed a little bit of BSD this last time arround. Did I say the "M" word! I guess if you loaded BSD on the system and set it up the way you like it, than you would know what modules to use and how the X server is setup. There is a console in MAC OS X. Try using it. I never said it was easy. Rember to back up your files to tape! OH! Sorry! I forgot, It's a MAC.

  4. True Multitasking by fm6 · · Score: 1, Troll

    I should have said "pre-emptive multitasking". MacOS 9 and earlier (and also Windows previous to Windows 95) only support a sort of voluntary multitasking, which assumes that all programs are well-behaved and give up the CPU when the don't need it. Since programs are rarely that well-written, it doesn't work very well. Serious OSs (like Unix) consider pre-emptive multitasking a basic feature.