[clug] Video card

[Bryan Kilgallin]

Thanks for your advice last night, Eyal:

> Are you saying that you had your original video card plugged (or is it 
> on-board?) as well as the Matrox?

The motherboard has on-board a VGA display port. That recognises the 
Lenovo monitor that I have plugged into it. But that is with the 
computer back in its original configuration (no extension cards).

Whereas I tried out the cards one at a time. And as you had suggested, I 
had various monitors plugged into every available video port! So at most 
I had three monitors on the table, all of which were plugged into (VGA 
or DVI) ports on the computer.

> And you had monitors connected to the other sockets which stayed blank?

Always the display featured on a monitor plugged into what I assume was 
a card of higher specification (like DVI) than the on-board VGA port. 
Except for the test of one card--which resulted in no monitor displaying!

> And you booted the system like this?

Yes: as I recall, later on in my testing I had set BIOS to "On-board" 
rather than "Auto".

> What does the GUI configuration app (display settings whatever) list?

Only when only the on-board video port was used, did Ubuntu's Screen 
Display window correctly identify the monitor brand (and size). Whereas 
in all instances where the display was via an extension graphics 
card--Screen Display said that only a laptop was the display. Never were 
more than one display indicated--despite in some tests all three 
monitors being plugged in. That was a VGA CRT attached to the on-board 
port, and two LCD monitors, attached to the ports of a graphics card.

> X interrogates any attached monitors and usually configures it 
> automatically, and I do not recall a case
> where I needed to "download" a driver.

Perhaps I did not understand how to configure the BIOS?

Today I bought and tried out two DVI cables. So I tested the LCD 
monitors with both VGA and DVI ports on the various graphics cards.

A friend who helped me lug monitors around, reckoned that my computer 
setup was archaic! But then, he's a video game addict. And I have not 
spent money on my computer system than he has on his.

-- 
www.netspeed.com.au/bryan/