DisplayLink device under Windows 7 and Windows XPSP3

[wrc4]

Hi,

I bought a USB VGA adapter that uses DisplayLink's DL-165 chip. It worked very well under Windows 7 until I changed my OS to Windows XP because of the limited amount of memory of Fit-PC2. Under Windows 7, I was able to plug in ONLY the USB VGA and boot up the system. The monitor connected to the adapter will be recognized and used as the Primary Display. However, under Windows XP when I boot the system up, the LED on the adapter will go one and then go off again without anything displayed on the screen. At this point if I hook up an HDMI monitor I will see the XP desktop displayed in a very low color depth (8bit I guess). As soon as I switched this desktop to 32bit color the USB VGA adapter started working. I tried both DisplayLink's current driver and the new beta driver but end up with the same result.

I wonder if this is a Windows XP issue? Is there any successful case of using a similar USB VGA adapter?

[irads]

The GMA500 driver tries to detect a display on the DVI interface at startup and falls back to minimum resolution otherwise.
You may try the IEGD driver instead. See http://fit-pc2.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=601

[wrc4]

Hi irads, I tried the driver you mentioned. It did solve the resolution problem so that the USB Monitor will be activated, but the HD playback and overall quality is not as good as the GMA 500-4 that I'm using previously. Is there an updated IEGD driver that I can try?

[benjgil]

wrc4, can i just ask - did you manage to get HD-playback working over the USB-VGA adaptor in Windows 7?

We are retailing these adaptors in the UK, and they work fine for us resolution-wise, but the only issue is the HD-playback being very choppy, as you've mentioned in your previous post.

If you've managed to get the HD-playback working in Windows 7 over the adaptor, then it would seem the problems with XP are an issue with the XP driver or possibly with the way XP deals with the USB port data transfer.

And if someone has a solution for playing HD over the USB adaptor on XP, i'd also be very interested to hear from them.

[wrc4]

Hi benjgil, to answer your question: I never tried playing HD over the USB to VGA adapter. What I meant was the IEGD driver's HD playback over HDMI is poorer than the GMA500 driver. Sorry for the confusion. But I did try playing DVD movie over the adapter on a 1280x1024 resolution and that worked very well. Before I bought the adapter the seller warned me that if I want HD playback this is not going to work. This is OK for me since I just want to be able to connect my FitPC2 to a VGA monitor. But they have a better model that is based on the DL195 chip. I guess that one could be better on HD playback.

[irads]

IEGD playback is not as good as GMA500. It may improve in future versions.

[wrc4]

With the latest GMA500 driver from Intel (dated 12/3/2009, version 6.14.11.1018), I was able to use the USB video dongle without a monitor plugged in the HDMI/DVI port. Note that you need to set the USB display as your main desktop. I don't know if this helped but when running the driver's setup.exe I used the following parameter:

-res 1024x768x16x60

Using the same parameter with older drivers did not work.

Now I can use my fit-pc2 at work where I only have VGA monitors.