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Wall-O-Monitors revisited - User Q&A

Posted Apr 14, 2006 at 02:40AM by Clay C. Listed in: Displays, Computing
Ó




We ran an article yesterday about the Wall-O-Monitors that we set up at "Crazy Jon's" office with twelve 30-inch dell monitors, and it
turned out to be very popular, getting linked on popular sites such as Digg, Engadget, Gizmodo, and Makezine. Many readers commented with lots of various questions, and a request for a video, so here's a quick update to yesterday's article. (If you missed it, check it out here, it's worth the read!)

People were also asking about the machines that were powering these bad boys. The power behind all this is 3 state of the art machines, on Windows XP Pro (there was talk of running a Unix OS, but was decided against). As you know we put 2 NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX 512mb on a motherboard with 2 PCI Express slots in each machine. Each card can run 2 of the Dell monitors at 2560 x 1600, so each machine powers 4 monitors. The 3 computers are on a KVM switch with a remote switch run to the desk. The last touch is a Linksys Gigabit switch, so that we can run video processing software over the network between the 4 machines.


Users also wanted to know why Jon went with all the costly LCD screens instead of just one huge projector. The reason for not going with this is twofold. First, this room has a wall of windows which let in a ton of sunlight, which would make the projection harder to see. Second, projectors just don't offer the resolution Jon was looking for. (49,152,000 pixels!)

Many people noticed the five 30-inch Apple monitors on Jon's desk and asked why we didn't use more Apples for the wall. However, there were problems trying to extend the video cable; it just wasn't feasible. Extending video over such a far distance is a real challenge; the longer the distance that the information has to travel within the cable, the less chance it will actually work. However, this wasn't so much of a problem with the 30-inch 2560x1600 resolution Dells, so thats what we went with. We used the EXT-DVI-141DLB DVI DL booster cables for the extension.

Lastly, users wanted to know why the frames around the monitors weren't removed so that the space between each monitor could be slimmer. We also noticed the 7/8” frame all the way around. So a Dell monitor was totally disassembled to see if we could reduce the gap between the monitors. Unfortunately the answer was no, with an aluminum frame that surrounds the monitor just under the plastic molding, there is no way to reduce the space.

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11 Comments


Sort by:
   by Anonymous Coward (Unregistered) - 2006-04-14
 » awesome
i want that.

   by Dremth - 2006-04-14
 » yum
drool.... :P~~~

   by Anonymous Coward (Unregistered) - 2006-04-14
 » Synergy
Rather than a KVM, you might consider Synergy...it allows keyboard and mouse, attached to one of the machines to be shared with the others over the network. Your biggest chalange with this might be the odd geometry of the monitors, but the code is open source, so why not hack it up to work as needed?

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

   by Anonymous Coward (Unregistered) - 2006-04-14
 » KVM is the same
KVM is doing the same thing =)

   by Anonymous Coward (Unregistered) - 2006-04-14
 » Q4?
My question is...can you run quake 4 across all 12 screens?

   by Anonymous Coward (Unregistered) - 2006-04-14
 » One Image On All 12?
How can you display one big image over all 12 monitors?

   by Anonymous Coward (Unregistered) - 2006-04-14
 » ee beta fugol!!!
ee betar muthath keetha oise he fugol nee othokhan foisha thee mozar thar khari untho furlo one buchothnee?

ee beta astha makhal!!!!!!!!

   by Anonymous Coward (Unregistered) - 2006-04-15
 » Lets not confuse power and video signal
"However, there were problems trying to extend the power cable; it just wasn't feasible. Extending power over such a far distance is a real challenge; the longer the distance that the power has to travel within the cable, the less chance it will actually power the monitor." I really presume your talking about extending the video (DVI / VGA etc) signal cable to the monitor, as last time I checked, you can have a pretty long power cord without any issues relating to power the device. There ARE quality issues etc related to extending video signal cables past a certain distances.

   by Advertising -
   by Slickfl21 - 2006-04-15
 » Questions
Well there are many questions placed here. So if you are wanting answers or even want to follow the progress of the wall-monitors check it out here. Http://www.data1online.com/tech

We update the site and progress of this project daily.

And trust me, Plasmas, projectors, and especially DLP wouldn't come close to this resolution.

   by Anonymous Coward (Unregistered) - 2006-04-17
 » BIG TV
I'll stick with my Samsung HL-R5688W 56" HDTV using the VGA input to get 1920x1080p that looks perfect! Thats 2.07 million pixels. Do you really need more? Plus you can use your monitor for a HDV too!

   by GadgetBoy (Unregistered) - 2006-05-05
 » Time to get a pair of Quadro FX4500 X2 cards
If you put a pair of these new cards in a machine, it could drive 8 of the displays by itself, so it would only take 2 machines to drive all 12 panels.



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