Re: [TCLUG:18254] Dual headed video cards

[Mike Hicks <hick0088@tc.umn.edu>]

Bob Tanner wrote:
> 
> As an aside, in the old days the PC BIOS would not allow multiple video cards.
> When did this change? Or was my crappy Postive ibm clone just junk?

Some PCI video cards can work in many different computer architectures
(x86, Alpha, PowerPC, etc.).  DOS-based x86 systems require the video
memory of the main card to be at a certain address (it's a different
location than mono/Hercules memory, so you have long been able to have a
color card and a mono/herc card in the same box).  There are, of course,
PCI cards that only work on x86 systems, but I think that most modern
cards should work in pretty much anything that knows how to talk to
them.

With the advent of AGP, many more cards are able to be the primary card
or to give up that right to another card in the box (A lot of that has
to do with the way the system BIOS is set up).  At any rate, it's been a
process.  More and more cards have become cross-platform as time has
gone by.  

-- 
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[ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088@tc.umn.edu ]