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Run Two 30" Apple Cinema Displays on a PC
dealcatcher writes "For those blessed by the Apple gods and actually own two 30-inch Apple Cinema Displays, this guide explains how to hook two of them up to a PC. The guide includes which graphics cards will support this configuration and a step-by-step of how to get it all going."
Each display costs $3000 from Apple's website.
1: buy two rather wonderfull but epensive monitors .... in other words do exactly the same thing you would do(read:Should do) normaly
2: buy expensive graphics card with duel dvi conectors and a framebuffer to support massive displays such as these
3: install graphics card(driver setup etc ) and then plug in new monitors ( if you buy one with conectors too close either, use an adaptor cable or slice up the one on your 3000 grand monitors... i know which i would do)
4: turn on system and configure your windowing system to use both monitors at a comfertable size
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
So this would be the computer equivalent of putting Formula One racing slicks on a Yugo?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
What a useful guide. You install the video card, plug in the displays, and it works. Gee, I never would have figured that out on my own.
Want to be helpful? Tell me how to get those two displays without selling both kidneys.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Part One was: "How to afford two 30" Apple Monitors."
Such a setup is so insanely great! (except for the mutilation of the DVI connector, ouch...) If only this guy can also tell me how to find the insanely huge sum for two 30" Cinema HDs.
it is like a million voices all cried out at once and were suddenly silenced.
possibly heart attacks.
But seriously, I'd just have put the G5 behind some soundproofing walls and run virtual pc on them. VPC suffices for most scientific programs that would not run under a unix environment.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
to see his desktop... ;)
you can SEE the silver spoon by which he is fed
Get paid to code OSS
Who has enough desk space for two 30" displays, That's what I'd like to know.
How practical is it? You'd have to sit pretty far away from them to see all that there is to see, but if you have to sit far away, why not go with two smaller screens and sit closer?
Eh.
This is all a bit daft - he has a G5 with these two massive monitors and chucks it all because of the fan noise.
So, in some bizarre attempt at making it better, he hooks them up to a pc.
Reminds me of the Volksagon adverts - It's a Mini adventure. Those were bloody stupid as well.
Well it's all for show. Nothing to see here except some twit bragging that he's filthy rich.
I'll admit, I only clicked on it to see the pictures of the dual 30" displays. Is it as beautiful as I expected? I think it was, only moreso. Now if only I could afford the cost (or the desk space).
Real_men_don't_need_spacebars.
This person has supersensitive hearing.
He's probably a spy, which would explain being able to afford two of those displays.
If he was truly blessed by the Apple gods he would be using a Mac. OK, a quiet one...
This just makes him a heretic.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
I hope the 10 people who can actually afford this enjoyed the article.
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
What a complete and total git. And this gets posted to /. for what reason?
(Remember: with great power comes great fan noise).
Yaz.
I have to admit, I just can't understand people who complain about computer noise. I have a damn loud computer- two 40mm drive cooler fans,an 80mm case fan, a 120mm case fan, two PSU fans, a CPU fan, and a fan on the graphics card. It bothered me at first, but after a couple of days I got used to it. For fuck's sake, just listen to music or watch TV or something.
And advice for the guy who wrote the article- the Quadro 4000 is just a Geforce 6800; there are fanless coolers for it if the deafening noise of one fan bugs you so much.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
I'd try the same thing if I was rich enough although I'd never hook them up to some POS pc. It might be too much monitor but it's still damn cool. Herbalizer
Why would anyone want to do this? Why not just get one 30" display, a G5 Tower (say, the $2k one), and a copy of Virtual PC w/ Windows XP Professional, and save about $250? After all, do you really need almost NINE HUNDRED square inches of screen? If you do, isn't it kind of a waste to have it displaying the much shoddier Windows graphics (or, shoddier still, I'm sorry to say, those of certain more politically acceptable free operating systems), blown up to offend the eye all the more? (Yes, let's have the taskbar be an awful shade of blue, and contrast it with a Start button of an awful shade of green. Yum!) You can have a mere 450 square inches of screen showing you something much more pleasant to look at, and still have Windows if you need it.
Two 30" monitors are a pain, one tends to center their attention on one monitor and place things that are always open on the other.
:)
l
The constant head turning and sometimes scooting your chair over to use the other monitor is just plain wasteful.
I've even tried placing one large monitor over the other, this seemed to help cut down on the scooting and head turning as I just can use my eyes to look up.
The work involved dragging windows up to the other monitor just isn't worth the effort.
Since any window can easily be minimized or using Expose in Mac OS X kind of makes getting a second 30" Display a total waste of money. I've been happier since I got rid of the other monitor. BTW I sit about 4 feet from the 30" to take it all in. Wireless keyboard is neccessary.
Of course the other person was very happy to receive it.
http://homepage.mac.com/hogfish/PhotoAlbum2.htm
...steal the money you need to afford this equipment. And the week after we'll be demonstrating a series of exercises you can use to relieve the pain from repeatedly craning your neck to view the far corners of your displays.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
what the BSOD looks like on the display. C'mon, show us the goods!
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
I'm on fire!!!
It's too much resolution captain! She can't take much more any longer!
to run that rig on Windows! KDE makes much better use of multi-monitor setups than does Windows.
mmmm xinerama!
This sig kills fascists.
Buy four USB hubs and a really damn long monitor cable, and put the stupid machine in the closet. The closet of some other room, even. Or in the basement. Run the cables through a hole in the wall. The G5 even comes with Firewire 800 and optical audio jacks, both of which can support nice long cable lengths.
Presently I have a P4 in a closet, with all the cabling run through a hole in the floor, along the underside of the house, and up through another hole near the monitor and stereo. I watch movies, compose music, hack, et cetera, starting from COMPLETE SILENCE. If I had a G5 I'd do the same thing - though I might need a bigger closet. >:)
I've been around a number of G5 towers running 30" Cinema Displays, as I work at a retail store. The G5s only make any noise that is audible above a slight whisper when they are churning data really hard.... or are defective. It is not unheard of for a G5 to have a bad midplane. This guy aparently didn't have the sense to bring his $9000+ setup back to an Apple Store and have the Geniuses say "Yup... that's noisy" and fix it. That said... he is clearly not aware of the giant performance hit his "silent" PC is from his G5. Oh well. Feels like another under-appreciated waste of power.
I got nothin'.
It's not that multiple monitor support is a big deal -- the Mac's been doing that for ages, as have Windows PCs. The "big deal" is that these displays require dual-link DVI, which isn't all that common. The NVIDIA card driving it on Power Mac G5s is built by NV specifically for Apple (and NV's Mac cards don't run on x86) -- but really, the guy didn't do anything all that amazing.
"Hmm, if I can find a dual-link DVI card for x86... I could run a 30 inch Cinema Display!"
I'm sure that took a long, hard bit of thinking to determine. Or not.
I don't see the big deal either, other than "look at me! I can afford two $3000 displays and a video card to drive them!"
Two is not the ideal monitor configuration. 3 identical monitors provide a much more balanced desktop. Who wants to look at a seam in the dead center of a desktop?
What I want to see, is a MAC running THREE 30 inch displays at full resolution. I've been trying to configure this for some time but have not found a real solution. Anyone know of a mac PCI card that can push a 30 at native resolution?
Wizard of Yendor, here I come!
Each display costs $3000 -- but dont forget the...
video card (approx $500)
tax ($150-500 est.)
Desktop space (4 feet gone)
On the plus side, youll be the envy of all the geeks on the block, aside from the crazy windows one that hates apple (despite having never tried one except for a quick second only to find it different than windows and therefore unacceptable).
Mike
I heart the RIAA & MPAA, im sure its mutual...
a massive mouse mat.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
... that what you want is THREE 30" displays so you can have one in the center as well as one each to the left and right so they wrap around you. Sounds good to me!
Anyone know of a mod for UT2004 so it'll display properly on all three monitors?
But in need of more desktop space, I've installed Desktop Manager, which allows me to use multiple virtual desktops (a la x-windows).
I setup my extra mouse buttons to switch forward and backward between the virtual screens, which is very fast and very handy. (with the help of gamepad companion, which is not free).
If you haven't tried free programs like Desktop Manager (or simular programs like Virtue), then I'd really recommend them to you.
Those Apple displays are also wall mountable. There goes your desk space argument.
...news that matters? Absolutely not.
To summarise the article:
Buy monitors. Buy graphics card compatible with monitors. Plug in. Adjust plug to fit. Adapt OS to use screens at maximum resolution. Gloat on internet.
That being said, my wife (Graphic Designer) has recently bought a dual G5 and its whisper quiet. The only time it gets noisy is if you accidentally tell it to boot from a network server that isn't there - this will scare the pants off most people, especially if they're not expecting it (like I wasn't). So I don't know what this guy was doing to get that much noise out of it...
Anyway the G5 is so nice that I'd leave Windows for good if I could (but can't due to having to develop in MS-land - have been dulling the pain by using Cygwin and FreeBSD servers...).
2. Get noisier PC.
3. Install two $3000 SWOP-certified monitors.
So, basically, you've just spent $6000 on monitors capable of displaying a level of clarity that Windows cannot, in even its greatest wet dreams, fully utilize... that is, unless this guy comes up with an equally-absurd, obscenely expensive, and Rube Goldbergian solution to make OS X run on an AMD or Intel chip.... which makes you wonder... why didn't he just buy a Mac.
With the kind of money this idiot likes to waste, maybe he should just rent time at Bell Labs' anechoic chamber... so he can listen to John Cage's 4'33" in all its tacit bliss. Obviously, he'll have to listen to it in his imagination, so he doesn't have to bear the sound of CD player spinning. Finally, he can enjoy 4 minutes and 33 seconds of absolute silence... not having to listen to anything except the sound of his circulatory and nervous systems operating... which will, undoubtedly, provoke him to write letters of complaint to Charles Darwin, who would be spinning in his grave... if it weren't for the fact that it would generate enough noise to provoke even further complaint from this pretentious, phonophobic ass.
Well, the Matrox Parhelia DL256 seems to be the PCI dual-link DVI card of choice. However, I can't find a Mac driver. The good news is that there DOES seem to be a Linux driver, so maybe porting would work? (yeah, I know, an XFree86 driver ported to Aqua isn't the best idea, but we could possibly get specs if it's open source)