We are investigating the feasibility and costs of having a custom graphics/sound card developed.
The device would have the following specification:
- Based on a PCI 2.0 x 16 connector
- Have 5 x VGA graphics chips capable of a resolution of 1024x768. The chips can be either ATI or N-Vidia chips or a cheaper 3rd party alternative.
- The first VGA graphics chip should link to a VGA output connector.
- The other 4 VGA graphics chips should be electronically connected to 4 x VGA to composite video converter chips.
- The device therefore presents itself to windows as a 5 headed graphics card.
- The device would also present to windows 4 separate audio devices. So either 4 x single sound chips, or if a single chip that can present itself as 4 discreet (not ASIO) audio devices is available, that could be used. The sound chips need only a WAVE out channel, no mic, line-in, or MIDI is required (though if these are standard features of the chip, thats ok)
- Only the VGA output connector needs to be physically present on the back of the board. The other connectors can simply be headers located on the top of the board which connect to a seperate backplate via short cables.
As you can see, this device is based on fairly simple industry standard chipsets. The requirement is to fit them all on one card and have them work electronically.
Is such a device possible electronically?
What sort of development fee would be required to create such a device?
What sort of cost do you think to have them produced the units in a quantity of say 20?
Stu.