Monitor spanning on new eMac confirmed

[Laslo Panaflex]

Hi guys,

I tried the iBook open firmware hack on a new radeon 7500 eMac and it works great. I also opened up a new eMac and swapped the cd rom for a super drive and the stock hard drive with a 120 gig one. The inside design of these new ones are completely different, most interesting is the cooling system. It has a solid copper tube from the top of the processor coming around to the front of the board with heat disapating metal fins. It reaminds me of the cooling system on the PB G4. Looks like the eMac is a pretty nice deal when you buy a 20" cinema display to hook up to it.

 

[Kwyjibo]

it would be very expensive to hook up a cinema display around $300 to buy and ADC to VGA converter......then the cost of the monitor but this is very cool news and i'm glad it works.

 

[vniow]

Yay! Somebody listened!

Now go tell www.xlr8yourmac.com so that the rest of the Mac community will know..

 

[wilhelmd]

Makes me want to buy an eMac... but then again, my money's on a PPC 970.

About the VGA->ADC-thingy, would this converter (is it Dr. Botts?) allow me to hook up my 12" PowerBook to a 23" Cinema Display? Would the DVIator or the Apple DVI->ADC converter enable me to use the 23" on a GeForce 3 (PC, sorry)? I hate those Dell-screens...

 

[ibookin']

Originally posted by wilhelmd
Makes me want to buy an eMac... but then again, my money's on a PPC 970.

About the VGA->ADC-thingy, would this converter (is it Dr. Botts?) allow me to hook up my 12" PowerBook to a 23" Cinema Display? Would the DVIator or the Apple DVI->ADC converter enable me to use the 23" on a GeForce 3 (PC, sorry)? I hate those Dell-screens...

Yes, you can do that.

Anyway, I have enabled the dual display hack on my iBook 800, and have had everything running smoothly on it. You never know how great dual displays are until you have them.

On hooking up a Cinema to the eMac unstead of buying a PowerMac, it's actually a bad deal. A 1GHz eMac and the VGA-ADC adapter will cost $100 less than the low-end PowerMac. The PowerMac has a faster bus, more expandability, more standard RAM, DDR RAM, the list goes on and on.

Plus, I don't think the Cinema display will like running on 16MB of VRAM.

 

[Laslo Panaflex]

yeah, but you can buy an eMac and a 20" cimema display right now for a good price and use that for a few months untill the bugs get worked out on the 970 powermacs. Then when you save up enough money you can buy a 970 powermac and use the 20" cimema with that, and still have a stand alone eMac. Just, why buy a powermac right now, really?

 

[ibookin']

Originally posted by Laslo Panaflex
yeah, but you can buy an eMac and a 20" cimema display right now for a good price and use that for a few months untill the bugs get worked out on the 970 powermacs. Then when you save up enough money you can buy a 970 powermac and use the 20" cimema with that, and still have a stand alone eMac. Just, why buy a powermac right now, really?

Yeah, but you're talking about a difference of $150 (factoring in the RAM difference between the PowerMac and the eMac), here. Considering the setup will cost AT LEAST $2500, that's not a lot of money.

Even in this scenario, it's still a better deal to get the PowerMac.

 

[gotohamish]

Do you know if when monitor spanning, you can run a DVD or iTunes visuals full screen on the second monitor, thus leaving the built-in display to work on?

H

 

[ibookin']

Originally posted by gotohamish
Do you know if when monitor spanning, you can run a DVD or iTunes visuals full screen on the second monitor, thus leaving the built-in display to work on?

H

I think the iTunes visuals would slow down the computer too much for that to be practical.

I have heard of people using the second monitor for DVD viewing, though. I haven't tried this because my damn combo drive won't read DVDs (needs to be sent off to Apple ).

 

[gotohamish]

Originally posted by ibookin'
I think the iTunes visuals would slow down the computer too much for that to be practical.

I have heard of people using the second monitor for DVD viewing, though. I haven't tried this because my damn combo drive won't read DVDs (needs to be sent off to Apple ).

Thanks - it's actually an iBook we're running that's been modified to have spanning - and it's only going to be light Web/Terminal use for the staff whilst visuals run of a giant LCD projector as the second display.

Any ideas? Does the DVD run full screen?

 

[peterjhill]

I use a PB800dvi and a 21 inch Trinitron all the time at work. iTunes visuals will run on both monitors and can not be configured (with available controls) to run on only one monitor. DVD Playback will run only on the primary monitor, which is the monitor that has the menu bar at the top. You can move the menu bar to the external monitor and run a dvd at full screen and all looks great. Just like a home dvd player (also works with the svideo out, just the same).

So you could run a dvd full screen in an external display and still surf the web on the second display, but you won't have any menus, so you will be limited to only those commands for which you know the keyboard equivalents.