Dual-Monitor Setup (HDMI+VGA)

8 réponses [Dernière contribution]
raghavgururajan
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 09/24/2018

Howdy Trisquel!

Few months back, my friend and I have built a workstation for him. He has a dual-monitor setup where one monitor is connected as HDMI-HDMI and another as HDMI-VGA, in the format Monitor-Machine. It was working fine until he applied recent system update. The VGA side loses signal often, but comes back when HDMI side is unplugged.

Here are the machine specifications,
[1] Motherboard: Barracuda Asus KCMA-D8
[2] CPU: AMD Opteron 4280 (2x)
[3] Memory: 8GB DDR3 Reg ECC RAM (8x)
[4] GPU: MSI Nvidia GT-710-2GD3-LP
[5] OS: Trisquel 9

Any ideas?

Regards,
RG.

Avron

I am a translator!

Hors ligne
A rejoint: 08/18/2020

Do you mean that the first screen is connected via the HDMI output of the GT-710 and the second screen via the VGA output of the KCMA-D8? What do you mean by HDMI-VGA? Is the the input to the second screen an HDMI input, then I assume there is a kind of converter to generate the digital signal on HDMI from the analog signal coming from the VGA output, is it so?

I have a machine with the same boards, I have two screens but one is only connected to other computers, I could try connecting it to the same computer but I don't have a converter so that would be with a VGA input (my screen has one).

Are you using the default kernel (4.15)?

raghavgururajan
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 09/24/2018

[1] HDMI output of GT-710 <-> HDMI Cable <-> HDMI input of Monitor A

[2] VGA output of GT-710 <-> VGA Cable <-> VGA2HDMI Cable <-> HDMI Cable <-> HDMI input of Monitor B

Using default kernel.

Avron

I am a translator!

Hors ligne
A rejoint: 08/18/2020

I tried the same but using VGA input on monitor B (I don't have this VGA2HDMI cable, it looks like this is not just a cable, there is necessarily some chip inside).

Monitor B did not display anything but screen properties showed the presence of a second screen. However, very soon monitor A went off. I disconnected monitor B then but monitor A still remained off. The mouse sharing with another computer still worked. I unpluged and replugged monitor A, after a while, I had an empty screen with the mouse pointer only, perfectly controllable but nothing else. I tried some things on the keyboard, after a while, the X server was shut down and I had console message about ongoing shut down with a number of unusual error messages.

So not only I cannot make it work but it also makes me lose control of the computer. I think I actually tried that with the DVI output and it was equally bad.

raghavgururajan
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 09/24/2018

Thanks for trying it out.

In my case; monitor A always work correctly, but the monitor B loses signal often and comes back when monitor A side is unplugged.

I also tried swapping monitors' places and the result is same as above.

Another interesting this, things were working fine until my friend applied recent system updates.

lanun
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 04/01/2021

> VGA Cable <-> VGA2HDMI Cable <-> HDMI Cable

As a wild guess, have you ever tried to plug the VGA2HDMI cable directly at both ends, or is it impractical to do even for a test?

Assuming, of course, that the problem is not directly related to the system update.

raghavgururajan
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 09/24/2018

Oops! My friend is actually using that.

So the setup is like this:

[1] HDMI output of GT-710 <-> HDMI Cable <-> HDMI input of Monitor A

[2] VGA output of GT-710 <-> VGA2HDMI Cable <-> HDMI input of Monitor B

andyprough
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 02/12/2015

If you were into spending money on it, you could buy one of the blobless nvidia cards we talked about awhile back that allows you to run 4 hdmi displays:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/50-blobless-video-card-can-drive-4-hdmi-displays

Unfortunately, it appears to me that the price is over $100 US for it right now on most of the parts websites, instead of the $50 it was supposed to originally cost. Maybe you could find a better deal though.

raghavgururajan
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 09/24/2018

Thanks for the tip.

I not sure if we can afford spending now, but may be in near future.