DVI connection to acer LCD problem with Mac mini

I have an acer al2216w 22 inch LCD monitor connected to my mac mini via the VGA adapter plug. but I wanted to try out the straight DVI connection to see if there was an improvement. when I connected the monitor straight with the DVI cable that came with it the monitor it says no signal. but it is fine with the VGA adapter plug. is the mini not compatible with standard DVI monitors? I googled around and found nothing on this subject. any help is appreciated.




mac mini 2.0 Ghz 1 Gig ram. leopard < latest updates.

Have you tried plugging it in Via VGA and than going into system preferences and than displays and seeing if you can fix the problem in there?

I don't see any settings there that pertain to DVI or VGA switching. I'm on leopard for the record. I guess I could try bumping down the resolution down a bit to maybe standard 1024 by 768. but the monitor itself says there is no signal at all. just like it isn't plugged in. I am set at 1440x900 75 hertz.

could the refresh rate be messing me up? shouldn't the mini be auto detecting the display? it does when connected via VGA.

No It should at least be detecting something, have you tried pressing "Detect Displays" under Displays in system preferences? Does your Mac find anything?

when the VGA is plugged in yes. I shutdown, connect the DVI cable and start up the mini the monitor says no signal and has no display. I have no other cable to use to see if the the cable is the fault unfortunately. does the mini need some time to detect? should I let it sit for a few minutes?

Don't shut down, stay logged in, disconnect the VGA and Plug the DVI in, let it sit for about a minute if it still doesn't work get back to us.

it did detect the monitor, and it set the resolution to 1600x1000, it looks nice by the way. but when I rebooted the machine the display went blank again.


the monitor said it was set at 1680x1050. so I changed the display to that setting and it looks even better now. but I'm afraid to shut it down because it won't come back up.

I'm not sure how to fix that, try setting the screen as your main display if possible, hopefully someone else around here can be of more help, good luck

thank you very much, I'm kind of old school and hot swapping monitors makes me queezy. >

lcd displays

subtler said:

I have an acer al2216w 22 inch LCD monitor connected to my mac mini via the VGA adapter plug. but I wanted to try out the straight DVI connection to see if there was an improvement. when I connected the monitor straight with the DVI cable that came with it the monitor it says no signal. but it is fine with the VGA adapter plug. is the mini not compatible with standard DVI monitors? I googled around and found nothing on this subject. any help is appreciated.




mac mini 2.0 Ghz 1 Gig ram. leopard < latest updates.

Click to expand...

i had very similar issues last night trying to get two different laptops (my new macbook and a new gateway under win xp) to display via my lcd tv. my very old dell (slower refresh rate) had always done this fine. today a tv tech told me that the refresh rate and resolution have to match exactly on both screens or it won't work. in fact, he used the word "critical." however, i couldn't change the refresh rate on my macbook-- it's grayed out in system prefs. let me know if you have any luck.

This worked for me

I had a similar issue trying to run my Dell 24" LCD at 1920x1200 (60Hz). It appears to be related to voltage droop on the GPU power rail. When the GPU is processing lots of stuff, my DVI goes out at high resolutions and the monitor turns on and off. I tried a hardware fix, soldering extra capacitors onto the board around the GPU to try to clean up the power, and that didn't help.

However, underclocking the ATI GPU fixed the problem for me. Crappy fix, but for the kind of stuff I do with the Mini there is no difference in performance that I can tell. Underclocking reduces the amount of power the GPU consumes and makes the voltage stable enough so that DVI works. (For me)

Get ATIccelerator from here:
http://thomas.perrier.name/software/ATIcceleratorII.html
It will require a reboot and will install a control panel in your system preferences. Go in there, and change the frequency of the processor to 200MHz (That worked for me)

Let me know if that fixes it.. It is pretty marginal so it might not work for everyone.
Ah, actually just noticed this is about an Intel Mac Mini.. This fix only works on the G4.

-Mike

I know at least on the PC side.....to change from a DVI signal to a VGA and vise-versa....it's best to completely shut the system down, change the plug n stuff...then start it up like that, usually works every time