30" Cinema Display interference problems with Adapter

I have posted this in the Mac Mini section but after a reply post I think it might be more suited in this section:

I recently purchased a Mac Mini for my brother and he's connected it to a 30" Cinema Display with the Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter but I'm experiencing really bad interference from what I can only think is that it's the adapter as I've connected it with the standard Mini-DVI to DVI Adapter and there's no interference whatsoever - but obviously it's the resolution that's needed.

It only occurs on pure black and it's random red and blue horizontal lines. I've uploaded a picture here to make it a bit clearer.

Now, the problem is that the Display is around 2 years old so past the year warranty has obviously expired (and you couldn't buy Applecare for it in South Africa at the time!)... So is it that I'm now stuck with a monitor that simply doesn't function correctly?

Mac Mini 2.26Ghz / 4GB Ram, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Mar 26, 2009 3:53 AM

Reply
6 replies

Mar 27, 2009 7:18 AM in response to ajvCal

For what it's worth... I did a bit more investigation and testing of my own system:

I originally had the problem with my Quad G5/GT6600 card, but it was very intermittent (could easily go days without seeing the problem or it would be around for a day or two). Yesterday, I upgraded my graphics card to a GT7800 and the problem was still there, but much worse. After using my system for a bit, I discovered the problem disappeared if I used my screen saver (it completely disappeared) but returned when I exited the screen saver. I tried various screen saver options: only if I used my screen saver to show photos from my Aperture library did the problem show up using the screen saver.

So, I started to think that the problem might have something to do with how much "performance stress" the display is put under. To test that theory a little further, I connected my older (circa 2002) PowerBook to the display (lower resolution, though): no problems whatsoever.

This morning, I reconnected my display to my Quad/GT7800. As it was booting up, the problem was there in full force, but once the system was displaying the login in screen it had dissipated completely. While using Mail and Safari the problem slow started to come back. So, I tried using the screen saver again: this time it did not make the problem go away.

The only conclusion I can draw is that the extent the problem is seen seems to be correlated to the type of graphics card being used. But the actual source of the problem remains very unclear (much like my display right now 🙂

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30" Cinema Display interference problems with Adapter

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