herndon@sctc.com (William R. Herndon) (11/07/90)
I am about to take delivery of an 030 cube that I will upgrade as soon
as the money is available. I am very interested in the idea of having
a "two-headed" cube. By that I mean a cube with two monochrome Mega-
pixel displays. One of the reasons that I'm buying a used cube versus
a new NeXTStation is the expansion slots and my hope that a board is
available ( or will soon be available ) that allows a second high-res
video display to be added to the NeXT.
Does such a board exist? Will NeXTStep 2.0 handle two displays? Is
there any way I can do this?
Thanks in advance. Any and all help is appreciated.
- Max
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William R. Herndon
Secure Computing Technology Corp. The opinions expressed are
mine, ALL MINE! HEH, HEH,
herndon@sctc.com HEH, HEH!!!
(612) 482-7431 declan@remus.rutgers.edu (Declan McCullagh/LZ) (11/08/90)
In article <1990Nov7.135636.27424@sctc.com>, herndon@sctc.com (William R. Herndon) writes: > > I am about to take delivery of an 030 cube that I will upgrade as soon > as the money is available. I am very interested in the idea of having > a "two-headed" cube. By that I mean a cube with two monochrome Mega- > pixel displays. One of the reasons that I'm buying a used cube versus > a new NeXTStation is the expansion slots and my hope that a board is > available ( or will soon be available ) that allows a second high-res > video display to be added to the NeXT. > > Does such a board exist? Will NeXTStep 2.0 handle two displays? Is > there any way I can do this? > > Thanks in advance. Any and all help is appreciated. > NeXTstep 2.0 will handle multiple displays quite well; there's a panel in Preferences that allows you to move them around, have one on top of the other, and position your dock and loginwindow on whatever screen you like. However, there is no support for two monochrome MegaPixel displays - the power supply was designed to support only one. Perhaps a third party will come out with a nice (inexpensive) greyscale board for the NeXTcube... -------------------------------------------------------------------- Declan McCullagh / NeXT Campus Consultant \ declan@remus.rutgers.edu --------------------------------------------------------------------
bostrov@storm.UUCP (Vareck Bostrom) (11/10/90)
In article <1990Nov7.135636.27424@sctc.com> herndon@sctc.com (William R. Herndon) writes: > Does such a board exist? Will NeXTStep 2.0 handle two displays? Is > there any way I can do this? I do believe that NeXTstep 2.0 WILL handle such things, and according to byte, you can have a NeXTdimention (sp?) driving a color monitor and the NeXTcpu board itself driving the mono, so it probably wont be long till what you want comes along.
rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) (11/13/90)
In article <1990Nov7.135636.27424@sctc.com>, herndon@sctc.com (William R. Herndon) writes: |> |> a "two-headed" cube. By that I mean a cube with two monochrome Mega- |> pixel displays. One of the reasons that I'm buying a used cube versus |> |> Does such a board exist? Will NeXTStep 2.0 handle two displays? Is |> there any way I can do this? What you want is technically possible but should not be done. Although NeXTStep 2.0 supports two displays, the monochrome Megapixel display draws its current from the cube. Thus two of these displays need too much power from the internal power supply of the cube. What you therefore would also need is a external power supply for the second display or a monochrome Megapixel display that is developed for this purpose. -- Ronald ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
smb@datran2.uunet (Steven M. Boker) (11/14/90)
In article <56192@brunix.UUCP>, rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) writes: > What you want is technically possible but should not be done. Although NeXTStep > 2.0 supports two displays, the monochrome Megapixel display draws its current > from the cube. Thus two of these displays need too much power from the > internal power supply of the cube. What you therefore would also need is a > external power supply for the second display or a monochrome Megapixel > display that is developed for this purpose. I propose that it would be a _very_ easy task to interpose an adapter at the cube end of the Megapixel monitor cable that terminated the power pins coming from the cube and shunted in a power supply from a free standing box. Trivial task for you bright young EE's out there. And you can bet you'd be able to sell those things like hotcakes. If you didn't put the NBIC chip in the additional board, you'd be able to hook it to the ethernet and boot right off of the other board. Think about this. You are looking for low cost per seat stations in a lab? The update board is $900 and the monitor is $700. The power supply could be sold for a gouging $300 and be worth the price. Does NeXT limit the number of upgrades that you can order? Isn't it in their interest to "let a thousand flowers blossom?" > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists > in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the > unreasonable man." Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yeah. And we should call it the unreasonable adapter in honor of Ronald. Steve. -- #====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====# # Steve Boker # Algorist: Adept at calculations -OED # # datran2!smb@uunet.uu.net # En Chaos Veritas -SMB # #====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#====#