Widescreen Gaming Forum

Well hi all, I'm noobish to this forum, but desperate at this point. I'm a technical computer consultant out of northern California, and I've been working on an uber surround gaming solution for years, and finally have achieved what I set out to do: have no less than (3) Sony GDM-FW900 24" widescreen CRT's in a Left Center Right surround configuration using a TripleHead2Go Analog with the Expander Tool giving widescreen capability. Ultimately each screen will be running 1280x768, for a total of 3840x768 resolution. My problem is that the GDM-FW900 can pull a 1280x768 res by itself, but when I switch on the 3840x768 mode for all 3 screens, it acts like that res is out of range and reverts after the 15 second waiting period. I can't figure out why it won't switch for the life of me. I've tried BNC cables, regular HD15 cables so that the DDC will carry across to the TH2G... Beta nVidia drivers, old drivers, nothing works. I'm in utter pain and anguish here... so close, right on the cusp of success, and can only get a 4:3 ratio on 3 GDM-FW900's, which is like... I don't know, I don't have a comparison for that kind of pain...
Anyways I'm running Vista x64 Ultimate on 4GB of DDR-800 on (2) Athlon 64 FX-74's (yes, 4x4, I'm a sucker) and (2) nVidia 8800GTS 640MB in SLI. Everything seems as it should be, but that damn resolution will not switch to 3840x768. Or any other widescreen res made available by the Matrox Expander Tool. Matrox isn't being much help... although I love them for the TH2G.
Anyone, please, any ideas at all?
I'll trade 9 years of computer industry knowledge for an answer!


ps. the last step if I can get past this res hurdle is to put up (3) 19" x 12" 220 grooves-per-inch Fresnel lenses on the monitors for the coup de grace. (Also totally eliminates the bezel between monitors :D )
I'll post up pics if I can pull it off

Press the menu button on the monitors when they go out of range. Write down the Hz values that are displayed.

It may be a refresh rate problem.

Hello mrdrumhead ... welcome to the forum ... :D

As Tanuki says it sounds like a refresh rate problem ...
You say the monitors can pull the 1280x768 res individually ... is that at 60Hz ?
As TripleHead runs at ... 3840x768 @ 60 Hz.

Hmmm, thanks Tanuki, thats a good idea, hadn't thought of doing that... yeah thats the closest thing I would imagine...
I've tried each monitor individually w/out the TH2G, and they all do 1280x768 @ 60Hz, so I can rule that out.

Thanks for replying though guys, I really appreciate it

/not quite at the end of my road now

Hi there! Not sure if its a directX issue?

Does overriding the directx Hz in dxdiag not work?

Okay, more new delicious info. Ran home over lunch and tried a bunch of stuff.
1st - Vista does not have the force refresh rate in dxdiag anymore, so I couldn't try that.
2nd - When I would try to switch to 3840x768, all 3 monitors would go blank, and display the "No input signal detected". The monitors were not being given an out of range signal, they just weren't being given any signal at all. Very curious, I said to myself. What was even more curious was that, when I clicked the 3840x768 resolution option, the right hand CRT would immediately display "No Signal Detected", while the Middle and Left CRT's hung around for a few seconds, looking for a signal, trying to switch to the correct resolution. Finally after 6 or 7 seconds, the Middle and Left ones displayed the "No Signal Detected" message, and then all three would switch back to the 3840x1024 resolution after the 15 second timeout.
So - because the TH2G needs all 3 monitors to be connected and communicating in order to display anything, the Right CRT was not receiving any signal at all from the outset, and so the other 2 CRT's couldn't display anything either.
3rd - What I then did was pull the RIGHT CRT Cable from the RIGHT CRT and switched it with the LEFT CRT Cable, so now the TH2G Right output was going to the LEFT CRT, and the LEFT output to the RIGHT CRT. Attempted to switch to 3840x768, and VOILA the LEFT crt instantly goes out, while the Middle and Right CRT's waffled around a bit searching for a valid signal, and then reported none.
Essentially what was happening was the Right Output of the TH2G was not sending any signal at all when switching into any widescreen mode (ie. 3840x768, 3840x720, etc.) BUT would send signal when in any 4:3 resolution. The only thing that allows 16:9 or 16:10 modes is the Expander Tool software applet. Very curious indeed. Next, I needed to make sure it wasn't some obscure hardware problem.
4th - So I have a spare hard drive is my back drive, and it has a working virgin XP Pro install on it (I use it as my Backup Exec System Recovery drive) So I booted to this drive, and keep in mind it has never booted with the TH2G plugged in or ever had any Matrox software installed on it. When it booted up, it instantly recognized the TH2G as a uber widescreen monitor, but with only 4:3 aspect ratio resolutions. I'm assuming that the TH2G is putting out a DDC signal that tells the computer what resolutions it can display. So the TH2G can work without a software layer... anyways. I wanted 3840x768 resolution though, so I installed the Matrox Triple Widescreen Expander Tool, switched to 3840x768, and

**OH MY GOD** it worked, all 3 monitors instantly switched to perfect aspect ratio 3840x768 on 3 GDM-FW900's and it was ohhh so beautiful. But, beautiful in Windows XP, not Vista 64 bit. So.

The hardware is obviously fine... the problem is that damn little Expander Tool or how its talking to Vista, because by logical process of elimination it has come down to a software problem either in how the Expander Tool is coded, or how it is talking to Vista x64, or if Vista x64 is being a bitch like usual. I think I will have to use Winternals Process Monitor to try and see exactly what the tool is installing/modifying and where, compare it to what it is installing/modifying in XP, and try to find out why the RIGHT CRT output only is not functioning in widescreen 3840x768.

So.... phew, yes I'm long-winded... anyone have any ideas, wanna give me a head start? I will pray to the Matrox gods and hope they will condescend to speak with me and fix the eternal thorn in my side that this has become...

I feel that pain mate! Ouch!

Vista is proving to have niggles when talking to 3rd party software that was designed really for XP? Do devs not get pre release copies of MS stuff to work with anymore?

I'm sorry it's being a pain but I'm all out of ideas after reading what you've done so far.... hope you fix it soon!!

Good luck bud ... at least you are slowly narrowing it down !