Issue with Coherence, 3 monitors, 2 video cards - HELP!!!

[alexjasper]

I purchased a copy of Parallels about a month ago (Retail Box) and have been using ever since. Let me take a sentence to praise your efforts and the product your brilliant developers have created. This is the first time in 10 years I have enjoyed working 100% on a Mac.

I have been unable to get Coherence to span over my 3 monitors and believe my setup is slightly different then most of the multi display testers out there so I figured a post might get some answers.

Sofware: Parallels Beta 3106 and 3094

Hardware: Latest Mac Pro Quad 3Ghz
2 ATI Radeon X1900 XT Video Cards
3 GB RAM
2 500 GB SATA stripped in RAID 0
1 Apple 30" Cinema Dispay - 2560x1600
2 Dell 24" Wide Aspect Ratio Displays - 1920x1200

As I mentioned before I have seen this issue in both 3094 and the newly released 3106. The 3036 release would barley even boot for me so I did not testing with it.

I am booting a "clean" (non-transported) .hdd of Windows XP Pro. Most everything works well, even coherence in single display mode. When I select the multi-monitor support for coherence and reboot coherence breaks all together. When I switch from windowed or full screen to coherence the dock icon displays but nothing shows on the desktop. I can launch any application and nothing will show on any of the 3 displays, though the dock icon shows activity.

Coherence in general seems quite buggy with my system, whenever I try to user it I expect 3-5 hard crashes per day. These are kernal panics that require a hard reboot of OSX.

Are their any other people out there that have been able to get coherence to run on more than 2 displays, using multiple video cards?

Any help would be apprecited, It would be great to throw a couple of the PC monitoring apps I have on the third display with ARD.

Thanks in advance for any help that can be given.

-ajasper

[BenInBlack]

Ibelieve my setup is slightly different then most

jasper

Boy, that is an under statement :D

Sorry no constructive points here, just drooling over the system specs and wish i had this problem

[drval]

I haven't done this yet as I'm using a MacBook Pro, but I am considering using a USB-based external monitor option, so as to have three monitors working. This would be in addition to the single external monitor I am currently using. My dual display situation works quite well with Coherence -- I have seen no crashes on the Windows side, nor any OSX kernel panics.

I would suggest removing one of your ATI cards to see if you can get a stable dual display situation to work. And I would suggest using less than maximal resolution when doing that. Once you have dual display working from a single video card at a less than maximal screen resolution, then try going to max screen resolution. If that works, then reintroduce the second video card, drop the resolution back down and see if you can span all three displays.

The only glitch that I've seen is that OSX still retain control over the video rendering and this means that the Windows Extended Desktop can ONLY be a simple rectangle -- ie you can't have different resolutions on the two monitors. If you do, the video display routines will disregard the extended regions of the larger desktop.

[alexjasper]

drvl,

Thanks for the response. I have no issues when spanning over 2 monitors using one video card. Sadly I am trying to span 3 with 2 and have gotten no where.

I"ll wait and see what the guru's have to say.

Thanks,
ajasper