eMac's won't show anything on second display

[geekindisguise]

OK, so I finally bought a Mini-VGA -> VGA adapter for my eMac. I was soo excited when it got here today! But, unlucky as always, nothing showed up on my external monitor. I go through Display settings and it pops up with the separate window for the VGA display, but NOTHING happens on the other monitor. So I unplug it and go over to my iBook G3. Plug the cable in and the SAME thing happens. Shows up in settings and all that, but there is no sign of life on the external monitor.

Is it the NEW cable that I JUST bought? Or the computers? Or the displays? I used different displays but they are both Gateways. I might try it with my TV to see if it might be something with Gateway monitors...
hmm.


Also, the eMac is a 1.42Ghz model and it has Spanning Doctor enabled.
The iBook G3 is a 700Mhz model and I have tried with Spanning Doctor both disabled and enabled.


PLEASE HELP!

 

[MacHamster68]

thats mysterious as i have the same eMac and obvious the same apple mini vga to vga adaper and mine was plug in the adapter ,connect it toa vga cable and that to the vga port of the monitor , then i click on detect screen and mirror enable ,it mirrored the screen and i can decide left or right from the emac, then i installed screen spanning doktor too and all fine its using both displays for the desktop...or was i only lucky ..i doubt that as i know some other eMacs that do the same thing

 

[ADent]

Sounds like a bad cable.

Exactly which cable did you get?

Which resolutions have you tried?

 

[MacHamster68]

if its not the cable ,you never know with cables, one lose soldering connection inside and it wont work
but i just remember on my tv for example i have vga, dvi and a hdmi and some other unknown ports to receive signal,but it doesn't switch automatic , i have to go in the menu of the tv and select vga or whatever the source is, otherwise it would stay black showing "no signal" in yellow letters

 

[geekindisguise]

I think it's a bad cable...

It is one of those 3rd Party ones. Not made by Apple.
I guess I will try and find another one. Apple this time.