What happens if you plug a monitor into a TT with a graphics card

[+slx]

Should have tried this but apparently never did.

 

What happens if you plug, say an SM124/144 into the standard ST monitor plug of a TT and hook up a VGA monitor to the graphics card. Will they show the same screen or is the machine capable of "dual-head" operation (maybe with some extra software). Excuse my ignorance but I was never more than a mere user on the ST/TT and never got into its innards like I did with the 8-bit (I blame that on no built-in/included language but maybe it was just interest shifting to other things and finding enough applications for my needs).

[Fuji-Man]

slx,

 

Well, usually it is mirrored or output is redirected by an AUTO program from the internal to the VME card. I'm not aware of any VME cards having software that support dual displays.

 

Fuji-Man

[atarian1]

On a MegaST with a 19" Moniterm B&W monitor, the SM124 would just show the copyright information of the software driver. I don't recall the exact message.

 

I remember once when it was demoed to me, once the software info showed up, people turned down the brightness of the SM124 to the lowest to reduce energy usage. The SM124 had to stay on if the Moniterm monitor was on. Sounds weird now, but that's what it was like back then.

 

I assume the TT030 would act the same way, but I could be wrong.

[pixelmischief]

This is what happens. The image on the monitor is the Matrix card. The image on the TV in the background is from the onboard VGA port.

 

[lp060]

There is a vcon modification for MiNT that allowed dual monitor use. You can run GEM apps on the VME video port and text based unix like apps on the original VGA port. I actually did this for a while.

 

Its also possible to write programs that access the original video port while the VME video is active. I done some tests on my TT030 with NVDI 5 and I can change the colors and write to the video ram of the original VGA port. I was even able to switch the video mode. I was going to write a small tool to send debug text to the old VGA port, but never got around to finishing it.