Max. length of DVI cable?

[[LYL]Homer]

I'm doing some computer upgrade work for a small design business that has three 21" CRT monitors that are in the middle of a 8'x12' table. Each of the three workstations has mounted on the underside of the table a wireless mouse/keyboard connected to a USB hub, power strip, and a VGA cable with extenders to run them back to a cabinet where the CPU's are. The run is about 30' total cable length. The VGA signal to the monitors seems to be okay and the USB stuff works fine.

The owner wants to upgrade to three 21-24" flatscreen monitors on the table and I'd like to convert this setup to DVI. Is this possible with DVI extender cables? If so, where do I get them? I've looked a little on the net and can't find any.

Plan B could be in one of two forms. 1) Run the flatscreens on VGA (ack!); or, 2) Instead of upgrading the mid-tower guts in the remote cabinet, build some ultra-quiet and small XPC-type setup to sit on the tabletop. (As for the CPU hardware, I'll be upgrading it from XP1700+'s to A64 of 3400-3500 rating. Haven't settled on 754 or 939 yet - we may have to go 754 to stay within budget.)

I prefer option B2, but this guy is freakish about having a 'clean' tabletop surface and it'll be an uphill battle. Now if I could only get a GeForce 6800GT into a Mac Mini running Windows.....well, that would be perrrrrfect!

 

[camdish]

There are a couple of ways you could go I guess.

Check out Black Box (www.blackbox.com) as they can make custom length DVI cables but I don't know what the actual max. length would be while still supporting the signal. Their tech support people should be able to tell you.

They also make a DVI Cat5 extender described as "supporting DVI extension with resolutions up to 1600 x 1200 at distances up to 328.1 feet (100 m)". Basically you plug the DVI output into a small "local" box that is then connected to another small "remote" box via Cat5 cable. I use something similar for a workstation farm that feeds 14 x flat panel monitors in a separate room - although it is VGA in this case.

You could go with your option B2 and mount the units on brackets under the table but in a position that they are accessible for CD drives etc. I'm sure there are companies that make support brackets or you could fashion your own.

HTH