[allthunbs]

OK, guys, my faith in Ati has been restored.

Now, before you go and get all optomistic, I'm in Canada and I just happened on the Canadian-based Tech support for Ati. Now, these guys are definately not the run of the mill brain-dead slobber jockies or minimum skill level mouthpieces, these guys are real pros and don't go and get impatient on them. They take the time to review the file and plan the next steps _before_ they go and talk to you. You go through two techs, the first documents everything and creates a support ticket. He's the front line, plug in the monitor type. If he's going to end up spending too much time with you, you get passed to "level 2." I ended up there. I used to provide level 3 and 5 for a software company but that's before "levels" were invented. We won't go there any further.

Here's what I've got:

ASUS P5RD1-VM motherboard with Ati Radeon Express 200 on board.
Sapphire Ati Radeon HD3450 (two ports, VGA and HDMI)
VisionTek Ati TV Wonder HD65 USB (I exchanged a dead VisionTek TV Wonder HD650 PCIe x1)
Acer AL1916b and X223Wbd

I first called VisionTek and it was obvious that they weren't prepared for customer support at any level. I described what happened with the PCIe card, how when installed it killed the system and it wouldn't even boot and they gave me an RMA number to sent it back. I took it back to the store and exchanged it for the USB version. Maybe that was a mistake.

Ok, a few things about philosophy here. I'm quite accustomed to running multiple heads on my systems. I run multi headed systems controlled through a KVM switch and others I control over the LAN. The security structure is the most remote and can only be accessed over the lan. It is even hidden behind a router that must itself be addressed. What I'm trying to say here is that I'm familiar with complex multiheaded environments. To date every time I've made a change I've always thought of a monitor supported by its own video card. This is the first time I've been forced to modify this philosophy.

In hindsight all I needed to do to resolve the collission was to remove one of the monitors and even with the PCIe card installed, it would have boot. We ran into this when we were trying to disable the onboard video support. Pros really make the difference!

I brought home the USB version and immediately ran into problems. It took a bit but I finally found a tech support number at Ati.

To boil the whole mess down into a few succinct comments, they told me to disable the on-board video (and they helped - we even got to the noboot point that VisionTek gave up on), that the HD3450 had two ports, one HDMI and the other a VGA and plug both monitors into the HD3450. We also found problems with the drivers that I downloaded. They gave me a second url where I downloaded the most recent drivers and installed them. All my problems disappeared. Everything installed perfectly.

The tricks seemed to be getting just the most recent drivers for my setup. I downloaded a whole bunch of individual files rather than the one great huge installer. Even those individual files were a but outdated. With all of those files, though, installation becomes somewhat confusing. My drivers are now all numbered in their install sequence. I.e. folder name "Ati-1" contains the first driver to be installed.

Here's a tip. Go to the support for your motherboard. Here's where Asus really shines. They keep updating the BIOS well beyond the end of sales dates. I reflashed my BIOS and it had some interesting little twists in it that influenced dual monitors and USB. I downloaded the full suite of new drivers for both the USB and the Uli structures from the ASUS site. Oh, some of the drivers for my motherboard had to come from the NVIDIA site. Interesting, Ati sent me there including instructions on flashing my bios.

There are four methods for updating BIOS. Ati put me on to the part of the ASUS manual that described the different BIOS update processes. The last time I flashed a BIOS, one used a floppy disk and prayed alot.

Now, don't expect the world to work the way my old All-in-Wonder did. It would only project TV onto the primary monitor. But I could do anything and it wouldn't even phase the TV. I'm talking compiling some heavy programming and other such stuff. This new setup runs everything across the bus so as long as the bus doesn't have much traffic, all is well. Put something heavy on the bus and the TV disappears or reappears sporatically. When you have the TV running, you'll have to chose between the Young and the Restless and getting some work done.

Total time to install several hours with downloading drivers and programs, flashing bios, updating drivers etc. Total time on the phone, about 10 minutes in several conversations. Please note that my installation was with a brand name motherboard for which there is support. If you try this with a branded box vendor, you may be disappointed, Ati may not be able to help simply because the information and driver may not be available.

By comparison, another organization making heavy-duty laser printers using tech support based in India didn't even refer to my questions and that's online where they can scroll up the screen to review the conversation. Their product is barely installed and that's after some 30 minues or so online.

I hope this helps. BTW, I found the Ati tech support number on the Ati web site which just happened to default to Canada.