OT: NOC Display's

Thu Jun 2 13:43:55 UTC 2005

> Anyway, in our NOC we current have two LCD projectors displaying 
> outputs from two different computers.  On one of the display's, I 
> would like to be able to take 4 VGA outputs from 4 workstations, and
> display it on the screen (aka: Hollywood square style).

This kind of problem is normally solved using software.
If the applications driving the 4 VGA displays are all
using X-Windows, then try an X Window manager that supports
capturing a window and displaying it in miniature form
in a dashboard or button bar. It should be possible to 
adapt this easily to display the 4 applications in 
a 2 x 2 matrix.

If the applications driving the displays are not using X-Windows
then it should still be possible to build an X based
solution but you would have to start by using VNC on
the application machines to provide a remote viewer
that can display window contents on the X machine.

Chances are you already have people with the skills
to do this whose time is not fully occupied in their
day job. If so, the marginal cost could be close to
zero.

--Michael Dillon