G4 mac Dual Monitors? How?

[raulapeno]

I have a G4 I bought in 2000 and want to have dual monitors for video editing. How do I do it? Do I need to buy a special card, or is my mac already capable?

 

[edesignuk]

It's hard for anyone to say if your Mac can already support dual screens when you give no information! What graphics card does your Mac have?

 

[raulapeno]

I've got no clue. I'm a new mac user...I've added nothing to the tower, it's all stock.

 

[caveman_uk]

OK....what sort of tower is it? If it's a recent G4 or G5 tower it will most likely have a video card with two outputs on it. A DVI output and a ADC output. Also in the box should be a ADC->DVI adaptor. With these you can use two DVI TFT monitors. Alternatively with a DVI->ADC adaptor (extra cash) you could run two of Apples' old TFT monitors. (The old ones were ADC, the new ones are DVI). Or if you get hold of some DVI->VGA adaptors you could run two VGA monitors. The last option is not as good as the image quality is better with digital outputs-VGA is analog

EDIT: Having just checked the 2000 powermacs most likely it's one of these

PCI Graphics
or these
Gigabit Ethernet

If it's a gigabit ethernet it has DVI and ADC connectors. If it's a PCI graphics it's VGA only. Both have quite low spec G4 processors so you may like to consider a processor upgrade if you're going to be doing any serious video editing

 

[raulapeno]

that makes sense looking at my tower I see what you mean.

thanks caveman,

 

[caveman_uk]

Or it could be an AGP Graphics model. Sorry I missed that one.

Sadly all three models look pretty similar. So look at the graphics card outputs. The PCI graphics has VGA, the AGP has VGA and DVI and the gigabit has DVI and ADC.

If you aren't sure what you're looking at on the graphics cards - a VGA socket is female D-shaped.. Both ADC and DVI are male and long thin connectors.