Re: [foxboro] dual-headed Linux box as operator workstation

Having just a little experience with Linux as an Xterminal it has proven 
relatively easy to set up. For a dual headed configuration you would 
need to go for Xfree4.0x because this is the first Xfree which supports 
dual head configs.

 >>A little snippet from the release notes of Xfree4.1: 
http://www.xfree.org/4.1.0/RELNOTES5.html#21

Some multi-head configurations are supported in XFree86 4.x, primarily 
with multiple PCI/AGP cards. However, this is an area that is still 
being worked on, and we expect that the range of configurations for 
which it works well will increase in future releases. A configuration 
that is known to work well in most cases is multiple (supported) Matrox 
cards.

One of the main problems is with drivers not sufficiently initialising 
cards that were not initialised at boot time. This has been improved 
somewhat with the INT10 support that is used by most drivers (which 
allows secondary card to be "soft-booted", but in some cases there are 
other issues that still need to be resolved. Some combinations can be 
made to work better by changing which card is the primary card (either 
by using a different PCI slot, or by changing the system BIOS's 
preference for the primary card).

<<
So expect yourself to get cosy with the manuals when it does not work 
the first time.


You may want to consider Sun's Solaris 8 for the Intel PC platform. We 
did and it was fun. It's a free download,  looks like a "real" WP51 when 
you choose the non default Openwin manager and not the CDE that is 
offered at installation time. Not enough time to figure out how to get 
things configured automatically though. The fonts directory from Foxboro 
can be mounted so there is no hassle with Font conversion or missing 
stuff when you have made changes to some Foxboro markers and things like 
that.
We where very impressed how fast it was and how "clean" the desktop looked.
I haven't tried dual head configurations but I know Solaris 2.5.1 was 
already up to that ;-))

Solaris 8 is a bit picky when it comes to supported hardware. (it's in 
fact extremely tolerant in not supporting a lot of hardware) but I think 
the Matrox you mention is on the supported hardware list.

I will try to cover these "real Xterminal" subjects in the next version 
of the Xterminal document.


Ron Deen (Foxboro)

duc.do@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>Hi list,
>
>We are thinking of setting up some PC-based operator workstations. The most
>common solution being a Windows box running any of the many X-emulators. The
>sticking point is the dual-headed solution -- we ran into some displaying
>issues with eXceed using the Matrox G400 DualHead video card driving two
>CRTs.
>
>Another option we are pondering is using a Linux box instead of Windows,
>again with the dual-output Matrox video card. Has anyone tried something
>like this that can give us some hints? I'd like to hear of your experience.
>
>Thanks in advance.
>
>Duc
>


 
 
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