I finnaly started using the span hack with the new radeon 9550 for ibook

[WillMak]

And it works wonderfully! It's nice to be able to type papers And do word documents at the same time. I've encountered no problems so far but I can really feel the hurt of having only 32 mb of video ram. For the most part it is pretty smooth but there are parts of the gui that are really slowed. For instance, using expose really lags and is very noticable. Another complaint which may just be my lack of knowledge is that I haven't been able to make my eternal monitor my main monitor. This means if you open up an application it'll open up on the ibook screen first so you'll have to drag it over to the external constantlywhich can be annoying.

Edit: I just popped in an xvid video and was extremely dissapointed to see that the video shows a lot of "tears" making it difficult to watch. How do I get rid of this hack now?

 

[erickg]

And it works wonderfully! It's nice to be able to type papers And do word documents at the same time. I've encountered no problems so far but I can really feel the hurt of having only 32 mb of video ram. For the most part it is pretty smooth but there are parts of the gui that are really slowed. For instance, using expose really lags and is very noticable. Another complaint which may just be my lack of knowledge is that I haven't been able to make my eternal monitor my main monitor. This means if you open up an application it'll open up on the ibook screen first so you'll have to drag it over to the external constantlywhich can be annoying.

Edit: I just popped in an xvid video and was extremely dissapointed to see that the video shows a lot of "tears" making it difficult to watch. How do I get rid of this hack now?

No need to take the hack off... just press F7 and you will be back in the iBooks regular mirroring-mode.

Edit: Also, are you sure you have the right codecs installed for Quicktime to handle the xvid video properly? If you do, VLC often does a better job than quicktime for certain files. Google "VLC OS X", the most current version is 0.82 I believe.

 

[WillMak]

No need to take the hack off... just press F7 and you will be back in the iBooks regular mirroring-mode.

Edit: Also, are you sure you have the right codecs installed for Quicktime to handle the xvid video properly? If you do, VLC often does a better job than quicktime for certain files. Google "VLC OS X", the most current version is 0.82 I believe.

That not it, Something isn't right. Lot of the videos that I have seen look grainier and less crisp as well as the occiasional tears as well. I know this is collateral because I've viewed these files before I installed the hack and theydefinitly looked a lot more crisp. How does one "zap" it off their firmware?

 

[MacRy]

Another complaint which may just be my lack of knowledge is that I haven't been able to make my eternal monitor my main monitor. This means if you open up an application it'll open up on the ibook screen first so you'll have to drag it over to the external constantlywhich can be annoying.

I use the hack on my iBook and if I remember correctly (my iBook is being repaired at the moment so I can't check i'm afraid) you go into Displays in System Settings and you can specify which screen in your main one. It has a red outline to the main screen. You can also drag them to determine which side they appear on.

 

[TBi]

Another complaint which may just be my lack of knowledge is that I haven't been able to make my eternal monitor my main monitor. This means if you open up an application it'll open up on the ibook screen first so you'll have to drag it over to the external constantlywhich can be annoying.

Open the displays system preference panels and go to the arrangement tab. You will see your small 12" screen and the external screen side by side. On the top of the 12" one there will be a white bar indicating the file menu, just drag this to the external monitor and it will become your main monitor.

From now on when you are just using the laptop it will use that as the main screen and when you plug in the external monitor it will use that as the main screen. It's quite smart actually.

 

[TBi]

That not it, Something isn't right. Lot of the videos that I have seen look grainier and less crisp as well as the occiasional tears as well. I know this is collateral because I've viewed these files before I installed the hack and theydefinitly looked a lot more crisp. How does one "zap" it off their firmware?

Does this happen AFTER you unplug the second monitor? Does it only happen with both monitors in? I noticed some (very little, usually only when playing a movie full screen) display corruption sometimes when running dual monitor but it never happens when i just use the main screen.

However the spanning doctor program which giveth spanning can also taketh away. Just click the button to turn it off from the program or do this

In case you want to return to your original configuration all you have to do is reset your nvram. This is usually done by pressing the Command-Option-P-R keys while you turn on your computer until the start sound chimes again. If you need more information on this you can search Apple's KBase (I'll add a direct link later when I have more time).