Zionworx

Please post your hardware issues hopefully we all can help in supporting each other with the hardware issues we all seem to get from time to time

Sorry... I can't seem to find the answer to what I'm looking for in the forum so I'm just going to ask it out here:

My church is running a really old computer which we are planning to upgrade, and I'm interested in running the ZionWorx program as the current one we're using is also equally as old as well.

The problem is that in Malaysia, the computer shops don't sell the Matrox video card that's recommended for the program. Can I just use a GeForce 4 or ATI Radeon which have outputs for analog, digital and RCA cables? The guys at the computer shops tell me that the analog output goes back to the monitor and the RCA output goes to the projector, but they don't know anything about if I can use ZionWorx with the card (ie, if I can use the program as intended with the card) They say that the dual output would come from the software as the hardware is dumb. So, can I actually use one of these two video cards?

There are two working solutions, one cheap and another expensive.

Cheap solution (RM30):

If your mother board already has a vga output, all you need to buy is a cheap plug-and-play single port display card. But you need to set the BIOS (Primary AGP setting) so that your new display card becomes the primary display. Remember to plug your display onto this port. If you have an existing old but plug-and-play display card, you don't need to buy anymore new card.

More expensive solution (RM300+):
Get a display card with dual display port + video I/O port. This may come in handy when Zionworx V3 is released and support video.
I have an ASUS V9180.

As DVI connector becomes popular, make sure that the card you buy support the connector for your display and projector.

By the way, make sure that you are running WinXP. It does make life a little easier for dual display support.

Thanks William

Sorry for the late reply... don't have an internet connection so it takes me a while to be able to check on messages.

Anyway, my church now plans to buy a ready-made system like Dell or HP, will we be able to utilize the dual video card method with those?

Also, what video cards qualify to be used? Over here we only have ATI Radeon and GeForce video cards, so I'm not sure if any of those can be used.

Enoch,

GeForce 4 or ATI Radeon are good stuff. I am quite sure that you can use them. Try out before you go out to buy new ones. On WinXP, you just plug in the display card and you should be able to see the dual display immediately.

On HP PC, it is worth while trying it out as they may require you to buy a dual ported card. I couldn't get my DeskPro to work.

William

Hi Enoch/William,

I should point out that the only reason I recommended a 'Matrox' dual display card before was that there weren't many around at the time (1999). Five years later there are brilliant dual head cards all over the place and relatively cheap too.

I'm no expert, but my nVidia Geforce2 MX card is seriously old yet has always delivered the goods since I've been developing ZionWorx...

Cheers,
Christian.

hey guys

after much procrastination and other waggling, we finally got our new computer to use with the projector. We got a Dell Dimension 4700 that has an ATi Radeon display card on it (can't remember the specific card) that has RGB, S-video and DVI outputs. Found out that the dual output works after buying a DVI-RGB converter and everything works fine! Monitor is connected to the RGB and the projector is plugged into the DVI converted into another RGB. Thanks!

blessings
Enoch