[dba-Tech] New virtual drive

Sounds like you've got a PCI-Express video card. I think that the smaller ones are another type of PCI-E.

I've not seen any motherboards that only come with one full size slot though, maybe you were really lucky there :-)

You would need another full size PCI-E slot to put another card in though, I don't think you can get cards to fit the smaller PCI-E slots.


Jon

-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Mark Breen
Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 10:19 AM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] New virtual drive

Hello Jim,
May I ask you a question that I have been trying to figure out for a while, but have not found a suitable place to ask.

I have a new Dell PC with the intel i7 processor, I upgraded when I bought the machine to include the 4850 video card.  It has two DVI outputs on the back and I can sucessfully run two monitors from the card both at 1920 x 1600, which is really great.

However, I am now curious how I would run a third monitor - not really because I think I would use it, mostly just wondering whether I could do it.
 When I look at the connector on the video card, and the socket it is installed in, there is only one such socket.  Sorry that I do not know the name of the socket.  In the olden days, it would have been ISA or PCI, but I am not sure what this socket is called.  The 4850 socket is about 5-6 inches long, there are about four or five other sockets on the mobo, but they are all only approx 1 inch long, I was shocked when I saw them.  Initially I thought, Hey there are no expansion slots in this machine other than the video card, then I saw these little baby sockets.

Are they new?  I guess so, but does that mean that this mobo only supports one video card?

thanks for any info,

Mark




2009/10/4 Jim Lawrence <accessd at shaw.ca>

> Last night I installed a new ASUS M4A78 Plus mother (2600 MHz), in my
> wife's old computer. The motherboard was $100, $30 x 2GB for memory
> and CPU.
> Quad-core AMD... the whole arrangement came to about $230 with
> taxes... the only additional expense was having to get an optical DVD drive, $40.
>
> The new board comes with a 1 GB NIC, two video card slots, eSATA/SATA
> connection, 5 on the board and two off the back (all BIOS
> configurable), in addition it come with 12 USB ports (auto-sensing;
> from legacy to high speed 2.0), sound and for backward compatibility
> it comes with COM and LPT port connectors as well as IDE slots. The
> board also supports Firewire but I have not figured out how to
> configure it as of yet.
>
> She seems happy but for how long?
>
> Now the question. I hope to just install a virtual PC (VirtualBox?)
> and simple install the old XP boot drive in/on the virtual. The old
> drive was 60GB and the new one is 500GB. I remember there was some
> talk, on the Lists about just backing up a drive on to a VPC but I
> have had no first hand experience.
>
> Any suggestions? Best methods? Best software? Gotcas? Etc..
>
> MTIA
> Jim
>
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