Author Topic: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...  (Read 12398 times)

Dariusz Piatkowski

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SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« on: September 17, 2019, 03:28:05 pm »
Hi Everyone,

So I got my dual-monitor setup up and running: ATI X850 Pro with two Samsung 245T panels. With their native resolution of 1920x1200 that gives me an OS/2 Desktop of 3840x1200...yey!!!

...but as I'm starting to discover there are some things that aren't quite right...no biggie any of them (no hard errors or app crashes, more of an annoyance), but I'm looking for suggestions and/or helpfull hints that others with such dual-head setups have found beneficial.

Currently using the option to display pop-up windows on Head_0.

Thanks!

Martin Iturbide

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #1 on: September 17, 2019, 04:15:14 pm »
Hi Dariusz.

I don't have a dual-head system, so I can note tell the "how the dual-head display change my life" experience  ;D
But I created I little wiki page for the ATI X850 Pro, please let me know if there is any tricks to set it up, config.sys, or anything else you want to include on the wiki page.

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Doug Clark

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #2 on: September 19, 2019, 07:16:33 am »
I have a dual head display and it changed my life.

After getting the memory used by SNAP adjusted (down) to what was really needed, I haven't really had any issues.   Well - none other than the fact that some applications place their dialog boxes exactly in the middle of the desktop, some size themselves when they start up to cover the entire desktop, and some are smart enough to put their dialog boxes in the middle of display 1. But other than that it works great. And I have been surprised at how much I enjoy, and how useful it is, to have a 3840 wide desktop.

Plus the SNAP dual display works better in AOS than the ATI dual display in Windows 7 in a number of ways, e.g. xCenter spans both monitors, the background bitmap spans both monitors, you don't have to have PmView in the monitor that you are going capture a screen shot in when you start the capture, etc.

ivan

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #3 on: September 19, 2019, 11:44:36 am »
Now if SNAP would work with the Radeon Vega 8 Graphics of the Ryzen processor I could get back to what I used to have on my old computer, a couple of 28 inch 1920x1200 monitors.

SNAP is not happy with the Vega graphics and Panorama works as long as I don't want to do anything with extensive graphics activity.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #4 on: September 19, 2019, 03:12:12 pm »
Hi Doug!

I have a dual head display and it changed my life.

After getting the memory used by SNAP adjusted (down) to what was really needed, I haven't really had any issues...

I couldn't agree more...LOL, which is why it still kind of boggles my mind why we have not spent any more time/$$$ on getting us updated SNAP or expanded Panorama functionality (by that I mean native support for dual-head configuration as opposed to relying on 3rd party screen extenders, etc.). I understand that required funding, an for my part was always happy to support that specific feature with a real additional-cost funding...I just wish someone would take it on.

Agree with the application behaviour findings, seeing the same here.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #5 on: September 19, 2019, 03:18:04 pm »
Hi ivan!

Now if SNAP would work with the Radeon Vega 8 Graphics of the Ryzen processor I could get back to what I used to have on my old computer, a couple of 28 inch 1920x1200 monitors.

SNAP is not happy with the Vega graphics and Panorama works as long as I don't want to do anything with extensive graphics activity.

You know, why I have been relying on my ancient (by today's standards anyways) ATI X850 XT PE video card to cover my OS/2 display needs, it is very clear that this hardware has exhausted all of it's power.

I have seen some feedback on the benefits of running the trully new hardware in native VESA mode (providing that the BIOS supports it) with something like the Panorama driver, end rsult being performance that is actually much better than the older hardware which had the optimized/accelerated device drivers (SNAP).

Since you seem to have Panorama working with at least a single display, how are you finding that performance in comparison to the SNAP driver setup?

Oh and regarding the extended graphics with Panorama, it is my understanding that there are 3rd party screen extenders that have been developed to enable this specific functionality...have you tried them?

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #6 on: September 19, 2019, 03:41:15 pm »
Ah, one more question for everyone: what interfaces are you using to enable dual-head setups?

What I mean is the following:

1) Head_0 => DVI, Head_1 => RGB (my current config)
2) Head_0 => DVI, Head_1 => DVI (my understanding is that SNAP did not support this on any chipsets)

Here is specifically what I am referencing as it appears in the SNAP readme.txt file:

Code: [Select]
Please note that there are some restrictions imposed for MultiHead:

1. Only CRT (15-pin VGA) output is supported for MultiHead at this time.
   You may need to use DVI->VGA connectors on some graphics cards.  The
   only exception to this is the ATI Radeon chipsets, which can also do
   multihead in CRT+DFP configurations, due to native panel programming.
   CRT+LCD, CRT+TV, and DFP+DFP are all unsupported at this time.

My experience matches this, I'm curious what others have seen?

Ian B Manners

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #7 on: September 19, 2019, 05:07:52 pm »
Hi Dariusz,

I've only used dual head on a ATI Radeon X550, and one other ATI card I've forgotten the model, one on the DVI, the other the RGB/VGA socket.
Never bothered trying it on anything else.

Cheers
Cheers
Ian B Manners

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #8 on: September 19, 2019, 05:21:52 pm »
Hi ivan!

Now if SNAP would work with the Radeon Vega 8 Graphics of the Ryzen processor I could get back to what I used to have on my old computer, a couple of 28 inch 1920x1200 monitors.

SNAP is not happy with the Vega graphics and Panorama works as long as I don't want to do anything with extensive graphics activity.

You know, why I have been relying on my ancient (by today's standards anyways) ATI X850 XT PE video card to cover my OS/2 display needs, it is very clear that this hardware has exhausted all of it's power.

I have seen some feedback on the benefits of running the trully new hardware in native VESA mode (providing that the BIOS supports it) with something like the Panorama driver, end rsult being performance that is actually much better than the older hardware which had the optimized/accelerated device drivers (SNAP).

Since you seem to have Panorama working with at least a single display, how are you finding that performance in comparison to the SNAP driver setup?

Oh and regarding the extended graphics with Panorama, it is my understanding that there are 3rd party screen extenders that have been developed to enable this specific functionality...have you tried them?

The performance of a recent Intel chipset and Panorama greatly exceeds the old accelerated graphics with SNAP. SNAP also made small graphic errors with Radeon chipsets, like the CPU graph misplaced somewhere else on the desktop. Panorama has none of these weird graphics bugs.

None of the third party extenders are needed any more.

Someone tried 4K and 5K monitors, but I haven't. Probably one big curved screen isn't as good as two screens, but it's close. Panorama works with DisplayPort or any other port supported by VESA.
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Andi B.

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #9 on: September 19, 2019, 06:05:44 pm »
My about 10 years old desktop with ATI X300 is still my main machine cause of it's my only computer which can run dual-head with OS/2. As this card does only have on DVI and one analog RGB connector one monitor has to live with the analog signal.

I forgot the paragraph in the SNAP readme which restricts dual-head with digital interface to ATI chips. So the Matrox G650 with two DVI outputs I bought some days ago will be useless I fear :-(

SNAP/Panorama development - AFAIK Panorama will never get multi-head support. It's hard enough to keep/make Panorama working on new systems it seems. OTOH SNAP seems to be a very very big challenge to understand, get it compiled, hard to debug (for todays standards), extend ... We would need more than the very few developers we have who can explore the details of this beast and go where No One Has Gone the last decade.

Doug Clark

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #10 on: September 19, 2019, 11:38:21 pm »
Dariusz,

I have three machines. All three use the same motherboard (Asus M5A78L-M) and the same processor (AMD FX4350).

One machine runs eComstation, WSeB, Panorama and is hooked to a Dell 27 inch monitor.

The second machine runs Win7. The third runs AOS with SNAP and has an ATI X600 video card.  The second and third machines are connected to two Samsung 27 inch monitors as dual head with two VGA KVM switches. The Win7 machine has a DVI to VGA adapter so that it can hook to the KVM. The ATI X600 has a y cable that converts the output socket on the video card into two VGA signals. (You can get Y cables for the x600  to convert to 2 DVI, 2 VGA, or 1 DVI and 1 VGA)

When I got my first 27 inch monitor a few years ago (the Samsung) I tried it both as DVI and as VGA. The VGA actually looked clearer when running OS/2.  Plus VGA KVMs are cheaper than DVI. Since VGA seemed to have a clearer picture (the lettering/fonts were clearer) and the KVMs are cheaper I have no really pressing desire to use DVI.

I have not run benchmarks on Panorama verses SNAP. But I can't see any speed or performance difference in OS/2 between the SNAP machine and the Panorama machine. Both run videos (using VLC) just fine. Both scroll text in EPM or other editors as fast as I can drag the cursor, and drag windows across the desktop the same. I also cannot see any video performance differences between the Win7 machine and the AOS machine. The Win7 machine is using the video chipset on the motherboard; the AOS is using the ATI x600 card plugged into a slot.

The big advantages of SNAP over Panorama are 1) dual head function, 2) SNAP blanks out the screen after a certain amount of time and Panorama does not, 3) SNAP runs Win-OS2 sessions better, or at all.  However the Win-OS2 function of Panorama verses SNAP may be related to the machines (and their bios) that I happen to be running Panorama on verses the the machines I am running SNAP on.

It used to be that Panorama was very slow compared to SNAP. My experience now is there is no noticeable difference performance wise. I am also running Panorama on an Lenovo i5 2013 vintage laptop and the performance is fine; but Win-OS2 doesn't work.

I also noticed a few months ago that there are now "dual channel" KVMs that support two inputs for each machine and have two outputs, so you can use a dual monitor setup between multiple machines without having to use two KVMs, like I am using. I have seen them for both VGA and DVI.


Martin Iturbide

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #11 on: September 20, 2019, 12:21:33 am »
Hi Doug

Sorry to annoy you with this.

I have three machines. All three use the same motherboard (Asus M5A78L-M) and the same processor (AMD FX4350).

Is it the M5A78L-M PLUS/USB3, the M5A78L-M/USB3 or the M5A78L-M LX ??

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Martin Iturbide
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Doug Clark

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #12 on: September 21, 2019, 05:05:29 pm »
It is the M5A78L-M USB3.

The motherboard has USB2 and USB3. The on-motherboard network chip works, as does the audio.  However I have inserted an Intel Pro 1000 network adapter because I found, for some reason, that adapter and driver works better with Netbios and the WPS than the on-board network chip.  The on-board network chip works fine for TCP/IP., and it works fine on the WSeB server in server function.

I am using WSeB as a file server, and connecting to the WSeB via netbios.  The Netbios performance issues showed up two ways: 1) copying a file from one machine to another from the command prompt took FOREVER, and 2) the first time I would open a WPS drive object for a drive on the server it took 20 to 30 seconds, or more, for the drive object to populate. This also, for some reason, affected the FOC, making it slow to display at times. But it did not affect Larsen Commander.  Very strange. This was not an issue when connecting to the Samba server running on the WSeB machine.  Installing the Intel network card and driver on the client machine fixed theses issues, regardless of whether the WSeB machine was running the network chipset on the motherboard or the Intel card. I have come to the conclusion the issue was between the chipset driver and the WPS.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #13 on: September 24, 2019, 02:49:08 am »
Thanks Doug.
Will it be too much to ask if you can post the PCI.exe and lsusb report to I can include this mainboard on the OS2World wiki?

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Martin Iturbide
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Doug Clark

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Re: SNAP and dual-head display setup recommendations...
« Reply #14 on: September 25, 2019, 05:41:35 am »
They are attached