Hello all, I recently purchased a used 30in Cinema Display. The previous owner let me test it on his mac pro and everything seemed fine. When I got it home and plugged it into my Macbook pro, there would be green dots and horizontal bars that would display on the monitor. I thought it was just my macbook's video card so I connected it to my desktop PC. I'm running a Radeon PRO 2400 w/ Dual link DVI. The monitor displayed fine during the bios boot and windows xp loading page, but when it got to the actual windows, the display went crazy again. Here are some pics of what I mean. Are there anyone that has encountered this problem? I'm beginning to rule out a video card issue and leaning towards a hardware issue with the display. I'm not sure if it makes sense though, if it displays the bios and winxp load page fine and crap out when it gets to the actual windows.
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30in Cinema Display going BONKERS - Pics attached.
- Thread starter shaodeee
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Will get a new video card tommorow and run one last test.
try reseating all the cables, all the power cables..make sure power cable coming form the display to the power brick is in all the way and snug.
look for any damaged pins on the dvi cable as well.
shouldnt have been damaged driving, i dont think theyre thaaaat fragile and breakable i transferred mine 2000 miles without a box in the back of a moving truck..risky but survived hah.
look for any damaged pins on the dvi cable as well.
shouldnt have been damaged driving, i dont think theyre thaaaat fragile and breakable i transferred mine 2000 miles without a box in the back of a moving truck..risky but survived hah.
I think you have a video card issue here. These displays are made to work with Macs, not PC's. I had a similar issue once where I was trying to make a PC work with a bad video card. I made the mistake of disabling the driver of video card. When the PC rebooted, BIOS and Windows XP logo displayed just fine, but as soon as it got past that part, black screen totally. It looks like your display is having the same problem: BIOS and boot up are fine, as soon as you get past the boot stage the display goes to hell. Try seeking out a driver for your PC.
I don't think your Macbook is strong enough to push out to that 30" monitor. I'm willing to bet your monitor is not the problem.
I don't think your Macbook is strong enough to push out to that 30" monitor. I'm willing to bet your monitor is not the problem.
It works absolutely fine on PC's and displays are not made for a certain brand. DVI is a standard and Apple graphic cards are exactly the same as PC ones in terms of the hardware.
Every MacBook Pro (first gen till now) is capable of running a 30" with it's full resolution.
Even if he would use a MacBook of an older generation that has only support up to 1920x1200, the 30" would run without such strange errors. It would however display a 1280x800 resolution.
But does his Macbook Pro have the juice to push out both to the 30" display and his MBP's display at the same time? I have an early 2009 MBP and it does not have the juice to push out to my Dell 24" LCD display and it's own display at the same time. The Dell's display flickers black lines until I close the lid of my MBP.
The fact that his PC displays just fine throughout the BIOS stage and gets past the Windows XP image before crapping out means that the problem is with the PC not the monitor. I have encountered the exact same problem in my line of work. Either the refresh rate on the PC is incorrect for the monitor, or the video card's software settings need to be adjusted. Could you boot up your PC using another monitor? Once you're up and running, can you attach the 30" Apple display as a secondary monitor and configure the settings through the ATI control panel?
Update!!
Here's a a quick update guys. I switched the video card on the PC to a Radeon 4650 with dual DVI-D ports. I plugged the display in and it worked.....kinda. It displays well but there are green specks that show up on some of the darker graphics. Its pretty noticeable and I can't seem to get rid of it. The dots do disappear when I drop the resolution down to 1280x800 or lower but return on any higher resolution. I then tried a new Nvida Quadro 380 and it actually got worse! So is this still a video card issue or display issue? Anybody have any input? Here are some attached pics. Pic 1 shows that it actually displays now. Pic 2 is an example of the green dots on the highest resolution. Pic 3 shows no dots on 1280x800.
Here's a a quick update guys. I switched the video card on the PC to a Radeon 4650 with dual DVI-D ports. I plugged the display in and it worked.....kinda. It displays well but there are green specks that show up on some of the darker graphics. Its pretty noticeable and I can't seem to get rid of it. The dots do disappear when I drop the resolution down to 1280x800 or lower but return on any higher resolution. I then tried a new Nvida Quadro 380 and it actually got worse! So is this still a video card issue or display issue? Anybody have any input? Here are some attached pics. Pic 1 shows that it actually displays now. Pic 2 is an example of the green dots on the highest resolution. Pic 3 shows no dots on 1280x800.
Attachments
That just happened to mine. It was a refurbished one that I bought ~2 months ago. I took it to the Apple store and they hooked it up to another laptop and it had the same issue so it was sent off for repair.