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theluggage

macrumors G3
Original poster
Jul 29, 2011
8,611
9,538
Hi,

I've recently started using Screen Recycler which lets me use the screen on my old 1.1 Mac Pro as a third display for my current MBP.

There's a certain amount of tearing/artifacts on the 'recycled' screen when you scroll or move windows or try to do something beyond the call such as playing video, but if you want an extra screen to park reference materials or tool palettes it seems pretty effective - when nothing is moving the quality is perfect.

My question is, has anybody done a comparison of this vs. a USB-to-video adapter such as this? Are they startlingly more effective?

Obviously, its only 'apples and oranges' if you have a spare Mac (but I do and it can always double up as a filestore/backup). ScreenRecycler should work with any computer with a VNC client, although it seems to work best with the ScreenRecycler folks' own client. I did have a quick try using a Raspberry Pi, but the VNC client on that waved the white flag when it tried to connect to ScreenRecycler (I'll re-configure the video RAM on the pi and try again sometime).

Screen recycler seemed a tad pricey at £20 but I don't see any competition, and the alternative is a USB adapter or a new Mac, so fair game.
 
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