Technological Musings

A few years ago, I came across a Mass EDI 4-monitor display. The computer system I had just happened to have two dual-display video cards, so it was a perfect match. Last year, one of the displays burned out and had to be replaced. Unfortunately, Mass wanted upwards of $500 for a new display. I did have a number of Dell displays available, though, and decided to look into adding one of those to the mix.

My initial attempt at adding a Dell to the mix was fairly crude, but it worked. I decided to rebuild the entire array this past week and remove the remaining three Mass monitors. There were two main reasons for this. First, the crude setup I had with the first Dell monitor wasn't an ideal situation. The way the new monitor was mounted, it pressed up against the others and was difficult to adjust. The second reason was that I have a new video card, a Galaxy nVidia GeForce 210, that requires DVI and not VGA. The version of the Mass display I had didn't support DVI.

And so I started to look at how to better mount a Dell display on a Mass multi-monitor array. The Dell monitor I used initially was a 1907FP. The general size was about right, it just needed to be lifted up away from the lower monitor a bit. The main problem I had with the current mount was that in order to couple the Mass mounting bracket to the Dell mounting bracket, there was really only one location that it could be placed without adding additional hardware. The Dell monitor has a small button on the back to remove it from its mounting, and the Mass has a lever of sorts that does the same. The coupling had to take both of these removal mechanisms into consideration. I spoke with a colleague about the problem and we came up with a small coupling plate that would raise the dell monitor up, keep both removal mechanisms clear, and allow for much better adjustment of the resulting monitor array.

Assembly was pretty straightforward. In order to attach the coupling plate to the Dell monitor, the Dell mount had to be removed from the original stand, lined up with the coupling plate, and holes were drilled to match.

Once the Dell side was finished, the Mass mount was removed from the original monitor and paired up with the augmented Dell mount.

And finally, the new augmented mounting brackets are attached to both the Dell monitor and the Mass monitor array. The dangling VGA cable was for testing prior to the installation of the new video card.

All that remains now is general adjustment of the new monitors. There's a single Hex screw on the Mass array behind each monitor that can be used to adjust the monitors up and down, as well as some angled movement. Thi should allow me to adjust the display to exactly what I need. And it now works with the new video card, which was a breeze to install and get running in Fedora.

I love it when a plan comes together.