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Multiple Monitors for iBooks

Posted by pudge on from the i-wonder-if-the-warranty-covers-open-firmware-hacks-gone-bad dept.

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.

7 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. The meaning of bork by floydigus · · Score: 5, Funny

    A quick search on Google returned this site.

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    All things in moderation; including moderation

  2. you're good. by Bizzarobot · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  3. Whoa, Pete! by thinmac · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

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    Narrative
    1. Re:Whoa, Pete! by scotto · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  4. Re:Get your terminology right by Steve+Cowan · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

  5. Re:Apple Laptop Keyboards Unsuitable for Unix User by tm2b · · Score: 5, Funny
    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.
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    "It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
  6. Re:Hmmm by fader · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    - fader