Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 14:53:43 +0800 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: mlduke@concentric.net Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: "Second Station" Revised Message-ID: <19971209145343.11187@lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.971208204940.420C-100000@mlduke.concentric.net>; from mlduke@concentric.net on Mon, Dec 08, 1997 at 09:05:31PM -0900 References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.971208204940.420C-100000@mlduke.concentric.net>
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On Mon, Dec 08, 1997 at 09:05:31PM -0900, mlduke@concentric.net wrote: > I've got one FreeBSD 2.2.2-RELEASE full tower box and I want to attach > a second monitor to it to run in my Daughter's room. A plug in like the > one my current monitor is plugged into does not exist on the back of > the box, and I don't know what to ask for in order to acquire the > necessary hardware. Well, it *is* possible to connect a second monitor to a FreeBSD box--in fact, that's exactly the setup I have at home. But there are serious restrictions. The most important is that you can connect another monitor, but you can't connect another keyboard, so both monitors run from the same keyboard. The standard way to do it is under X, running the multi-head X server from Xi graphics ($$$). The alternative, which could even be cheaper, is to connect a serial terminal to one of the serial ports. You should be able to pick up a serial terminal second hand quite cheaply. None of this is very exciting. That doesn't give you an X display, of course, unless you use an X terminal, which would require an Ethernet connection, but you'll probably find it easier to install a second machine, maybe a smaller one (old 386) which would just need to run the display and connect to the first machine for the processing. Again, of course, you'd need an Ethernet connection, though you could possibly use PPP instead. > Local (Nampa, Idaho) and Anchorage custom computer folks don't have a > clue as I've been able to learn so far (one I thought to be among the > better of Anchorage cc's even told me Unix is old, outdated and not > used much anymore and would hear nothing to the contrary). I'm sure he knows exactly what he's talking about, too :-) Greg
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