Multiple Monitors for iBooks

nevershower writes "I found this while reading MacOSXHints. It's a firmware script for Radeon iBooks that allows them to use monitor spanning! DO NOT run this script if you have a Rage iBook. It might permanently bork your laptop." Borking is bad, especially if it is permanent.

Comments

Swedish Chef

[Strog]

Mmm Bork Bork Bork.

Funny for Muppets but not funny for your laptop

The meaning of bork

[floydigus]

A quick search on Google returned this site.

Re:The meaning of bork

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Confucious say, man who post then argue with moderator like train with no wheels: very quickly, get nowhere.

Re:The meaning of bork

[Golias]

Actually, while the term "Borking" is frequently used by Republicans to refer to character assasination, it was actually a left-wing lobbyist who first verbed the name "Bork".

When Bush The Elder appointed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, Florence Kennedy, then president of the National Organization of Women told the press, "we're going to Bork him. We're going to kill him politically." Shortly afterwards, Anita Hill came forward to accuse him of sexual harrassing her several years earlier.

you're good.

[Bizzarobot]

This post says "RageM6" looks like what you're supposed to have to enable spanning.
This one tells you how to revert. Good luck!

Whoa, Pete!

[thinmac]

I have a 700Mhz radion iBook, so as soon as I saw this story I rebooted and made the change (it's not so much a script as a list of firmware commands, you have to copy it out or look at them on another machine and enter them by hand). I'm now typing this in on my 21 inch Sony trinitron running at 1600x1200. Works great!
Gotta wonder, though. Apple really has limited the use of this radion chip. They disable this, and it only came with 16 megs of vram. Chip supports up to 64! If it only came with 16 more, it would be a pretty able 3d card (not that it's terrible now, just somewhat underpowered). How much would an extra 16 megs cost?

Re:Whoa, Pete!

[scotto]

Apple can't make the iBook too good relative to the PowerBook G4, or it's low price would cannibalize sales from their premium laptop. That's why monitor spanning is disabled and they only put 16MB of RAM in it.

Re:Whoa, Pete!

[frankie]

if they let you do this originally, i would have bought a 12" ibook instead of my powerbook G4

Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner! This is the exact reason why Apple disabled dual monitors on the iBook (and iMac).

I am so very glad this hack was created. When it's time to replace my Pismo, I'll get an iBook.

Re:Whoa, Pete!

[dalamcd]

You're pretty dumb. ^____^

Apple is a good (as in 'able', not as in 'holy' or something) company. They have a line of products, from low-end to high-end. If you want better than a 'cippled low-range outdated' card, you go for a higher-end product.

All (good) businesses do this.

By your reasoning, McDonalds should only sell the Big Mac, Microsoft should only sell WindowsXP Professional, car companies should never make a car under $50,000, and Apple should only sell PowerMacs.

I'm 90% sure this is a troll, but whatever.

dalamcd

Re:Whoa, Pete!

[Jezza]

Err... You're kidding right? I've used both, but own neither :-( but given the choice I'd have a PowerBook G4, why?

It's a G4 (obvious I know) but that's quicker (if you do video on it then it's LOTS quicker.

It's got a bigger screen (and it's a laptop - you won't be next to a display all the time will you? {if the answers yes - get a PowerMac!})

It's thinner.

It can take more RAM.

It looks nicer. (ok maybe that's subjective)

The G4 PowerBook will last you longer (unless you drop it) as it is a better machine to start with. (So you'll feel the "upgrade itch" later)

Dude, the G4 PowerBook is one, nice Mac, sure the iBook is nice too, but the PowerBook usually has the edge. (Ok, when doesn't it have the edge? When money's short {duh} or when you want a REALLY small machine to stuff in a small bag)

Yeah, this is nice for anyone who has an iBook (assuming this actually works properly long term) but it hardly devalues the PowerBook. (Anyway the PowerBook has a certain prestige)

Re:Whoa, Pete!

[Laplace]

cost. $1k vs. $4k. I love my iBook.

Re:Whoa, Pete!

[Colitis]

(iBook vs Powerbook)

>It's got a bigger screen (and it's a laptop - you
>won't be next to a display all the time will you?

The majority of the time I'm using my iBook, I have an external screen available. When I'm out and about, the ability to fit easily into my pack is more important than the size of the screen (the reduced width of the iBook is more significant than the reduced depth of the Powerbook).

>It can take more RAM.

I don't have my iBook maxed out anyway, so this isn't an issue for me.

>It looks nicer. (ok maybe that's subjective)

It is. I prefer the iBook look, as does my friend with a Powerbook.

>The G4 PowerBook will last you longer

Maybe. But with a laptop half the price, I can afford to replace it a lot sooner.

Is it possible to do the "reverse" on an iMac

[automandc]

In the same vein, does anyone know if it's possible to use the built in LCD panel on an iMac as a monitor for a different computer (i.e. a "video-in" for the iMac monitor)?

I realize that it is probably a hardware hack, but if anyone has ever done this I'd be interested to hear. One of my major reasons for not getting a Mac is that I can't justify (afford) a G4 standalone, but I don't want two monitors on my desk unless I can use both of them simultaneously.

Re:Is it possible to do the "reverse" on an iMac

[GlassHeart]

In the same vein, does anyone know if it's possible to use the built in LCD panel on an iMac as a monitor for a different computer (i.e. a "video-in" for the iMac monitor)?

I'm not sure I completely understand your needs, but would VNC be an incomplete but cheap solution?

Re:Is it possible to do the "reverse" on an iMac

[gamgee5273]

The CRT iMacs (or, at least, the early ones) had a standard VGA connection inside the case. That led to some folks snaking the connector out and setting up a KVM.

If the new ones have some sort of standard connector, then it could be done (disconnect the monitor from the board, run it to a KVM, run the KVM to the board...). I would dig around and see if you can find some screenshots of new iMac dissections...

Re:Is it possible to do the "reverse" on an iMac

[Triv]

In the same vein, does anyone know if it's possible to use the built in LCD panel on an iMac as a monitor for a different computer (i.e. a "video-in" for the iMac monitor)?

Know what I'd like to be able to do (when I get sick of my new iMac?) take off the screen and articulated arm, and connect a cinema display (or whatever I can afford) The dome would look soooo cool as a separate computer (Like a cube, but round. Wow. That's deep. and I'm exhausted)

Mmmmm. Pipe dreams. :)

Triv

Re:Is it possible to do the "reverse" on an iMac

[automandc]

For some people, that would probably work fine, but not in my case. Essentially, what you are talking about is using the iMac as a terminal to connect to whatever other machine.

At that level, I might as well just run VirtualPC (OK, well, it might not be that bad). Essentially there are two reasons a VNC wouldn't solve my problem: (1) I already have hardware I don't wish to get rid of (i.e. 19" CRT), and (2) I wouldn't want my use of the PC to be limited by problems/bottlenecks over the LAN and software issues on the Mac. In essence, I want to do what Gamgee5273 suggests, i.e. plug the Mac into a KVM and use it as an external monitor.

Thanks for the creative suggestion though...

Question about mod

[PsychoSpunk]

Since you tried this out, are there any side effects of the change. I read about this earlier today and before the site got /.ed, and followed a link to the previous hack. In it, they said something about DVD Player freaking out, but I don't know if that is in reference to the known problem of the TV out issue or something else. I didn't have a chance to run the commands this morning before work, and wanted to wait to here from other reports before doing it.

Anyway, if you have any anecdotal information regarding side effects, it'd help those of us who haven't done anything yet.

Thanks!

eMacs?

[mkelley]

I saw that this might work on the 17" iMacs, and wondered if they can get the GeForce2 in the eMac to do the same thing with it's external mirror port.

Get your terminology right

[azav]

The term "Monitor spanning" does not apply to macintoshes since you are NOT spanning one screen to multiple monitors.

The correct term is "multiple monitor support" because the macintosh has been built with support for multiple monitors from day two.

Please use the correct terminology.

Re:Get your terminology right

[Steve Cowan]

The problem is that "multiple monitor support" is an ambiguous term. The iBook has multiple monitor support - you can plug in a VGA monitor and have it display the same thing that's on your built-in display. In Apple parlance it's mirroring, but technically it is still multiple monitor support.

On their web site, Apple has referred to monitor spanning as both "extended desktop" and "dual display".

Now I just wish somebody could come up with a hack for my RAGE iBook 500.

Works a treat...

[Colitis]

Was easily done, and now I have monitor spanning enabled and working fine. No obvious problems with apps yet.

I only have a 15" LCD so I can't try what happens when the external screen has higher res than the built-in one, but with both displays in the same res I'm quite happy.

(this is on my 700MHz iBook with Radeon chipset).

Closed-lid?

[cpw]

Does this allow for closed-lid* functionality as well? (That's what I'd kill for in on my iBook)

*Closed-lid mode is when a monitor is plugged into the 'Book, as well as a keyboard, the screen is closed, and machine uses them instead. PowerBooks do this, but iBooks do not.

Re:Closed-lid?

[Erik K. Veland]

Except PowerBook G4s don't.

It's called ventilation, your mac needs it and it needs it bad through the keyboard. Always leave your laptop open when running. (Don't force it using stupid tricks like rebooting, then closing the lid). I borked my TiBook bad, and it's not covered by guarantee.

Works fine on new 600MHz iBook

[bskelton]

This works like a dream :) Now I have both my little iBook and 21 inch monitor working side-by-side. I wonder if Apple will disable this hack in future versions of the OS, or if they will actually 'turn on' this functionality in the newer iBooks? k-RAD!

Quartz Extreme probably won't work

[drsmithy]

Be aware that using spanning will disable QE. Assuming the iBook is like my (Rev A 667) TiBook, when display spanning is used the 16MB of VRAM on the chip is split into 8MB per display, which isn't enough for QE.

Re:Apple Laptop Keyboards Unsuitable for Unix User

[tm2b]

I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key.

Oh, please. It means nothing of the sort - different Unix vendors have been placing the Ctrl and Caps Lock keys in different places for years. Look at, say, 15 years ago - 1987 - DEC keyboards, IBM RT keyboards, Sun2 keyboards, and (the upcoming) Sun 3 keyboards were very different.

A truly long-time Unix user (vs. a "my favorite vendor's Unix" user) would be used to adapting to different keyboards and would get on to truly important personal preference wars, like emacs vs. vi, X11 vs. WM, or the OTBS.

My iBook actually did this once...

[thunderbird46]

I'm not sure how I got it to do it, but one time when I plugged my PC's 17" monitor into my 700 MHz iBook w/ the Radeon, I got dual-head mode instead of mirroring mode, without a hack. It was really strange. I'd move an app's window off to the side to test it and sure enough it'd appear on the CRT. Must have been some sort of bug.

If it can be done with an iBook...

[Jezza]

If this works on an iBook, can a similar trick work on the eMac? That's cheap AND has a G4... It's just a thought. (Can't imagine I didn't think of that before)

Re:If it can be done with an iBook...

[myov]

Apple Portables have used ATI mobility chips for the last few years, which supports dual monitors (video mirroring and dual displays). The chip basically has 2 outputs, and the mirroring is software driven.

The eMac uses a GeForce2 MX, which is designed for a desktop computer, and can only drive a single monitor. Apple is simply splitting the output of the chip to drive two monitors in hardware. I haven't used an eMac, but this is how it was done on the iMacs with video out.

Re:Monitor not compatible?

[Zo0ok]

Actually Dell monitors (fairly new 17-inch CRTs that I have been using) do not use standard VGA-wiring.

However, sometimes things work nonetheless.

We had Dell (Optiplex GX110) computers connected to Dell Displays, via an extra standard VGA cable: the computer froze. Changing the extra cable for a "DELL extra cable" fixed the problem...

We were as surprised as you man...

Finally!

[jerk]

I know this has been discussed for quite a while, but now it's finally a reality. I'm typing this on my 21" Sun (trinitron) monitor at 1600x1200 and have my mail window open and maximized on my 12.1" iBook display (700mhz). Thanks a ton!

Re:Hmmm

[fader]

I have a 14" 700Mhz iBook. Unfortunately it reports "ATY,RageM6" on the Apple System Profiler. Should I risk running the script?

Well, I wouldn't want to be responsible for telling you to try something risky with your laptop... but having said that, I saw this on MacOSXHints.com last night. I have a 12" 700Mhz iBook, which reported the same video card. But I tried the hack anyway, and it works perfectly. I can't believe Apple didn't enable this on the iBooks that support it.

The funniest thing is, the video card supports waaay higher resolutions than the laptop display will do, so you can slam on an external monitor and have a decent desktop size when you're at your desk.

Re:Hmmm

[phyxeld]

I can't believe Apple didn't enable this on the iBooks that support it.

It's not that they didn't enable it, its that they went out of their way to disable it. ATI's chipset is perfectly capable, but this is one of those premium features your not supposed to get without a ti-book. The forbidden fruit, so to speak.

Re:I have an iBook....

[davidstrauss]

It seems that this poster has more dualities (think mental ones) than just two monitors and two mates.