I've been using an Evo N600c since the end of 2006. I took my 800MHz Evo N600C to Iraq with me and it survived the ordeal. This year I decided to get a new laptop but could not find one that met my needs (must run DOS, Win98, and XP; have 4:3 screen ect). I have all the Multi-Bay toys, 4 AC adapters, and the Armada Docking Station EM and I hate to start over again buying accessories. So I decided to get the fastest N600c I could get.
So I found a stripped Evo N600c 1.2 GHz with the SXGA (1400 x 1050) screen on eBay for $80 and began to set her up. All I use the laptop for is Word, Internet browsing, email, and other lightweight tasks. No need for a quad core here.
In went a 320 GB hard drive, a new battery, and 512 MB RAM. Partitioned the HD, and loaded the 3 operating systems. Life is good! OS selection is done using System Commander 8.20.
Trouble began when I tried to use multiple monitors attached to the docking station.
I wanted a main screen of 1600 x 1200 (4:3 ratio same as the laptop screen) and a 1680 x 1050 screen in PORTRAIT mode on the right side of the main screen. I use the portrait screen for Word docs and code listings. This is how I wanted the screens set up when I use XP Pro SP3.
The Armada docking station has 3 PCI slots. In went an ATI PCI video card. The portrait monitor would be using the PCI slot video card; the main screen will use the VGA output on the docking station. Since the N600c uses a 32MB ATI Radeon Mobility chip, I thought using an ATI PCI card would work. Wrong! I tried 4 different ATI/ATI powered PCI cards and all had the same problem: The ATI software will not rotate the secondary monitor. It tries but fails. Some ATI cards could not drive the screen at 1680 x 1050. The cards had as little as 32MB ram to 256MB ram. There is some conflict between the two ATI driver packages. ATI does not provide drivers for the Radeon Mobility â they send you to the laptop maker. So you have to use the Compaq ATI driver for the main screen.
Ther are two software utilies that will flip a screen: the free iRotate and the $40 Pivot Pro.
iRotate will crash when you try to use it to flip the secondary monitor with the ATI drivers loaded (I used the Compaq provided ATI driver for the main screen and the ATI provided drivers for the PCI cards). I could get Pivot Pro to work but it costs $40 and the ATI drivers should rotate the screen.
I then tried a Matrox G450 dual head PCI card with 32MB ram The ATI and Matrox software clashed but by removing the ATI control panel I could get iRotate to flip the screen but it was slow. The Matrox driver did not do 1680 x 1050 (but can be added if you track down and use the Matrox Tweak Tool). The Matrox software will NOT rotate a screen; you have to use iRote or Pivot Pro software. Frustration level was very high to say the least.
Next I bought an Nvidia Gforce2 MX PCI 64MB card off of eBay for $15. Nirvana! The ATI CP and the Nvidia drivers do not conflict and the Nvidia CP will flip the screen and drive the screen at 1680 x 1050. No need for iRotate or Pivot Pro.
Sorry for the long post but if you are trying to use a PCI video card with an Evo N600c, avoid ATI and Matrox PCI video cards. The Nvidia card was the most compatible PCI card that I found and was one of the cheapest.
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Anthony, FWIW: I never used an n600c. The end of my scale was an M700.
With the latter I never was successful when trying to use an additional graphics card in the EM Armada station. There always was something not working as it should. So after having tried half a dozen of cards I finally gave it up.
Printable version
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