Wow. I love the technical answer. [...]
Expanding on this (sorry for the delay!), here are some things worth trying:
1. Use a VGA
to HDMI adapter such as
this one (make sure it works in
this direction, not the other way round!) coupled with a passive HDMI (male) to DVI (female) adapter to hook up the Cinema Display to the Rage's VGA port. Yes, really. The VGA port can handle much higher pixel clocks (
300 MHz) than the DVI port due to CRTs needing larger blanking periods than LCDs and thus needing a higher pixel clock for a given timing, and CRTs being able to cope with much higher resolutions and refresh rates than LCDs of the day.
2. Connect
both a VGA monitor
and the Cinema Display to the Rage at the same time. It doesn't support dual monitors so just one of the outputs may be active, or both may run at the same timing and display the same thing. If both are active, you could then check what mode the Cinema Display is being run at by the Rage. You could then try to use
DisplayConfigX to define custom modes (see option 4 for details on these).
3. Connect just a VGA monitor to the Rage, boot the Mac and install a VNC server that works on Mac OS X v10.2 Jaguar (
VineServer?). Configure it to allow remote access to the Mac starting at the login screen (i.e. when the GUI loads and the Cinema Display turns black); then reboot with just the Cinema Display hooked up and connect to the Mac from another system on the same network using a VNC client. Check what mode the Cinema Display is being run at. You could then try to use
DisplayConfigX to define custom modes (see option 4 for details on these).
4. Upgrade to Mac OS X v10.3 Panther or a later version so you can use
SwitchResX to define custom modes (
DisplayConfigX needs to be purchased in order to define custom modes without restrictions. SwitchResX does not but it requires Panther at least.) The reason for using SwitchResX is to try custom 1680×1050 CVT-RB modes with reduced refresh rates in order to stay below the TMDS transmitter's pixel clock limit. Assuming it is around 112.27 MHz, 1680×1050 at 56 Hz refresh (111 MHz pixel clock) should be doable, but the question is: will the Cinema Display accept that mode or will it remain black? If it doesn't accept 56 Hz, check if 57, 58 or 59 Hz work, conveniently also determining where the TMDS transmitter's pixel clock limit is in the process. Since you won't be able to see anything on the Cinema Display until you manage to find a working mode, you need to be remotely logged on to the Mac using VNC to do this (see option 3 for details).
