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Wayne Swingle swingle at ca.inter.net
Mon May 19 23:47:43 PDT 2003


Thanks, Mike.  You may be right about the finder, but I have tried the 
following, which may be of interest to PB 667 users.  I downloaded the 
following apps:
-Quartz Extreme Check (macupdate.com).......(checks all monitors to see 
if Quartz Extreme is active)
-PCI Extreme! (macupdate.com)........................(modifies the 
config.plist to enable Quartz Extreme on PCI Radeon cards, as well as 
earlier Radeon Notebook on board  video with only 8 meg VRAM. The app 
will also let users have Extreme enabled and Extreme disabled cards 
co-exist)
-Quartz Debugger (apple.com)

The Ti-book 667 has a built in Radeon 16 meg, which just meets Apple's 
default minimum of 16 meg vram (radeon) to work with Quartz Extreme. 
With no external VGA connected, I verified that Quartz Extreme was 
indeed active.  I then re-booted with the VGA monitor attached, and 
verified with Quartz Extreme Check that Quartz Extreme was off on both 
monitors.  This is due to the onboard Radeon 16 meg mobility card 
having to split its Vram between the two monitors.

I then ran the Radeon (8 MB) Install.pkg included with PCI Extreme!,  
and rebooted. Voila!  Quartz extreme enabeld for both monitors. I then 
attempted to crash the system by opening,closing, and minimizing 
windows on the second monitor.  No problems at all.  I would deduce 
that whatever part of OS 10.2.6 which handles window redraws across 2 
monitors is faulty when Quartz Extreme is not in use.

I then booted Pro-tools 6.0.1, the app for which I absolutely need 2 
monitors.  The mix window worked fine on the second monitor.  
Previously simply dragging it there would crash the system completely, 
and if it did not, a resize would. Some apps would be ok on the second 
screen, but the Dock, Finder windows, and Itunes were dangerous to run 
there. Any operation which caused a window or window animation to cross 
over the 2 displays would crash. I am happy..almost.

There are a few drawbacks. Enabling Quartz Extreme on both displays 
with an effective  vram of 8 megs each seemed to speed things up, like 
they would be with no VGA attached.  However, QuickTime movie playback 
was nearly impossible.  Forget about Itunes Visualizer at full screen.  
(without PCI extreme installed, it would automatically scale down its 
size, with it installed, system crashes if full screen attempted.)  But 
ProTools runs just fine.  PCI Extreme comes with a script to return the 
system to default, so it would be fairly easy to switch back and forth 
as needed.

Aside from getting a newer machine, this seems to be a workaround for 
now.  I still need to see if I can capture using FC pro with the new 
settings, somehow I doubt it would work well.  I need to be able to 
send a dv stream out the firewire from Protools, while using the 8 meg 
vram hack.  If anyone cares to know the result of that experiment to 
come, let me know.

Cheers!!!



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