Multiple Monitors

If you have viewed our ARECC photos, there are three monitors setup at each operators positions with the availability to expand to four monitors should space permit. We are using Windows XP Professional as our operating system, so we can not advise on other systems how the setup would work or how to configure them.

First you need to open up your computer to see what card slots are available as there are several differant kinds PCI - PCIe and AGP are the most common. If you have a small desktop unit called 1/2 height you may run into difficulty finding an external card to fit, but don't give up there, they do have USB VGA supported plug in adapters!

Next you will need to purchase the external plug in video card or cards depending on how many monitors you want to use.

If you are only wanting to add one more monitor you can either purchase a single dual monitor card or two single monitor cards depending on the slot availability in your computer.

We used cards capable of suppoprting TWO monitors each and added two cards to each computer, so we have AGP and PCIe video cards. Once they were installed, then connect the moniotrs to video ports and turn on the computers. All of them or two of them many initially come on with the same Windows screen. That's normal.

Once the system has booted up completely one or two of them may stay on the main screen the others may go blank, that depends on the computer itself. They are not yet setup so don't start the panic yet.

Next go into your control panel and click on the DISPLAY icon, choosoe settings. This is where things will look different to you if you have looked here before.

You should see multiple screens and possibly one more than you actually hooked up. There is a selection to EXPAND Windows across the monitors - click on that and the screens will change to a main screen and the rest with just the windows background with NO ICONs on them.

There is an IDENTIFY button on this screen too, when you click it with will show you a large number in thecenter of each monior you have connected and how Windows is Identifying that monitor.

Pay attention to the number on the screen with the ICONS if you plan to make THAT ONE your main screen.

Since we don't normally do things scientifically, we lined the monitors up left to right in numerical order, then traced the video cable from each back to the computer so we could lable the cards and connectors 1-2-3-4.

The next test once that is done, move your mouse left to right - it should cross all the screens in the same direction going from 1 to 2 to 3 etc.

IF it does not, and it jumps from 1 to 3 then to 2 or on a two monitor system it comes inon the wrong side of the monitor you need to do one of two things.

This is where this gets interesting. On the settings screens - you can change the positions of the numbered monitors by clicking and draging them into a new position.

On OPS-3 our monitors are setup in a SQUARE of 4 monitors. We arranged the monitos in the setup window so we can move our mouse from the lower left screen, to the upper left screen over to the roght upper screen to the lower right screen, plus it allows us to move diagonally from lower left to upper right in one quick movement.

So you can change them by the software, unplug and replug them into the different ports on the video cards to get the arrangement you want.