[ale] Dual video on HP pavillion running Centos

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Neal,

I had just a few random thoughts.  I don't know about centos.  I've only run ubuntu and mint.  Is centos in the debian family?

I realize you want to run the onboard graphics.  I can't speak to that directly.

However, if you wanted to use the radeon card, I have successfully run dual monitors on a mint installation with an amd radeon card.

If you go that route, you should be able to use both the dvi and hdmi port simultaneously, I think.

You can get dvi-vga adapters pretty cheap.  Some monitors come with them.  For higher res screens you need dual link dvi connectors.  You might want to look up to see whether 1080p needs dual link.  To run vga, the dvi connector has to have an analog channel.  I'm pretty sure that radeon card has analog and probably dual link, but you'd have to check the spec sheet to be sure. 

If you decide to use the radeon card, you'll probably want to load the drivers from ati, assuming hp didn't change the card too much, if drivers for centos are available.  Or, maybe from HP.  I think my dual displays are currently running in clone mode.  At one point, I had them running in extended desktop mode, but something changed.  At one point, I had to repair a failed driver installation.  I have a link to an article about that.  I also had to mess with xrander I think to set the primary and secondary monitor.  At one point after installing a new gpu card, my gui wouldn't boot and I had to reinitialize the driver from the command console.  I have a link for that too.

If any of these circumstances become relevant to you, drop me a line and I'll be glad to help any way I can.

Sincerely,

Ron



Neal Rhodes <neal at mnopltd.com> wrote:

>So, we've been running Centos 6.3 on an HP Pavilion p7-1131 Desktop PC
>for about 1.5 years now.   And loving it. 
>
>We now lust after running two 24" monitors for work.  No games, just
>two
>decent monitors at 1920x1080. 
>
>The unit was delivered with an additional card: an HP 634478-001, which
>is an HP flavor of AMD Radeon, which has DVI and HDMI only. (no VGA;
>weird.)  If this card is present, then I've experienced that  it takes
>precedence, the onboard VGA goes dormant, and there ain't no BIOS setup
>options which pertain to making both of them play nice with each other.
>
>
>And the really interesting thing is that the system board has a DVI
>connector, which is mounted onto a header and goes through a port in
>the
>back.   And on the DVI port on the back is a black plastic cover
>screwed
>on which says "DO NOT REMOVE".    (reminds me of a 78 Alfa-Romeo sedan
>which had a sticker on the rear seats: "rear seats not to be occupied
>when vehicle is in motion".)  
>
>
>
>Based on HP's website, the specs on the unit say: 
>
>Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD Integrated graphics (DX10.1)
>*Integrated video is not available if a graphics card is installed. 
>        Supports PCI Express x16 graphics cards
>        DVI and VGA ports (both ports can be used at the same time)
>        
>        
>Curious-er and Curious-er.   This thing was shipped with Win7.  
> 
>Various HP articles indicate they stick those plastic covers on when
>the
>additional video card would have caused the onboard video ports to be
>disabled.   I don't see any way this thing would have driven the VGA as
>delivered. 
>
>My inclinations are to try using the onboard DVI port, since I took the
>Radeon card out.  I'm trying to figure out how to figure out if the
>Intel video chip would fail to drive the two ports at full resolution
>if
>it could do one. 
>
>Any reason to not try?  Is my dipstick gonna fall off?  
>
>I'd have to get a DVI-to-VGA cable to hook up the 2nd monitor.  Can I
>just hook it up and run the Display Preferences utility and tell it to
>Detect Monitors?  Or do I have to reboot?  Reason being that I'm
>switching these two monitors back and forth with client notebooks. 
>
>Neal Rhodes
>MNOP Ltd
> 



--

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Ron Frazier
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