Green Dots on Apple Cinema Display - Solution!

I am posting this to help others with the same problem-

I spent literally one day (approx. 10 hours) trying to solve my problem with green dots showing on my new Apple 23" HD Display after it woke from sleep mode.

I tired everything possible to fix the problem:
-One hour on the phone with Apple tech support
-Reset Apple's Parameters memory (PMU, VNRAM)
-Completed an extensive Apple system hardware test (All tests passed)
-Bought an extra fan that I mounted inside my G5 tower to provide extra cooling for the graphics card because I thought the card was overheating (not the case)
-Updated Fireware to 5.1.5f2
-Took my G5 tower and display to a local Apple store to test on different monitors and computers - that testing concluded that my graphics card was the problem
-Took out and reinstalled the graphics card several times
-Checked all connections and used different AC to DC adaptor that comes with the display
-Downloaded the "Retail Update" driver from ATI website

None of these things worked.

Then I went back to the ATI website and downloaded the driver "ATI Displays Panel". This solved the problem.

Note: The release notes for this driver do not mention anything about it solving the "green dots" problem, so I was hesitant to download it.

I hope at least one person can use this to save them much time and frustration.

PowerMac G5, Mac OS X (10.5.2), 2003 G5, 1.6; ATI Radeon X800XT graphics card

Posted on May 24, 2008 10:33 AM

Reply
2 replies

Aug 7, 2008 10:56 PM in response to Gregory Scarcell

I also have the ATI DIsplays Panel v4.5.7 (0002) installed but unfortunately still have the random green pixels display issue on both my displays. Running the app didn't help my system. No useful settings available in the app for the OEM ATI Radeon 9800 Pro card.

I have a 5 year old dual 2.0 GHz G5 with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro card running OSX 10.4.11 and 2 displays: 23" Apple Cinema and 19" digital Samsung SyncMaster 930B. Cleaning the card didn't help. Unable to resolve the display issue at this time. Resetting the NVRAM didn't help, as some suggested. Perhaps I will need to replace the card.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

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Green Dots on Apple Cinema Display - Solution!

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