Switching between virtual desktops

[Mark Wagner]

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 11:20, Luca Bezerra <lucabezerra at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 10:58 AM, Matthijs Kooijman <matthijs at stdin.nl>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Luca,
>>
>> But that is on a single monitor. If I understand your intent correctly,
>> you
>> want to multiplex the signal over 10 different monitors, which is the real
>> challenge here. I'm not so sure what a monitor does when you suddenly
>> disconnect it for a (short) while, since it will probably lose the syncing
>> signals.
>
>
>>
>> If you build your hardware clever enough so it will always connect
>> the syncing signals to all monitors, and connect the signal pins to ground
>> (or
>> something) when the monitor is not "selected", this might work, provided
>> that
>> your monitor is "slow" enough (if it switches to black fast enough, you'll
>> be
>> looking at a monitor that is black 9/10th of the time).
>
>    A: Well, the initial idea is to switch monitors so fast that maybe the
> monitor wouldn't even "notice" that he got "disconnected", but I dont know
> if thats possible either, since nowadays the monitors are having faster and
> faster response times... Who would say the advances on technology could be
> an obstacle to development, huh? :P

It's not possible without some fancy hardware in the switch box: if
you're going with your six-monitor setup and a simple A-B-C switch,
each monitor needs to be able to handle a refresh rate of at least
360Hz to avoid flicker (I don't know of any CRT that can do more than
160Hz; it's rare for LCDs to handle more than 75Hz), and will be
seeing no signal for five out of every six frames (any modern monitor
will realize it's lost sync and will go into standby).

In order to get this to work, the switch box needs to capture the
video signal for a frame, store it, and repeat it on a given monitor's
output until a new frame for that monitor comes along.  Once that's
done, the rest of the problem becomes trivial.  It would be easier
(and probably faster and cheaper) to lurk on Ebay until you can find a
four-port PCI video card.

-- 
Mark