I have a 22'Cinema display approx 2 years old on a dual 1gHz G4. It has started going totally black at random today. So far it has come back each time, but I fear something really bad is about to happen. Is this my display or video card? I have checked connections and rebooted and it still happens.
I started having this problem with my 20" acd since yesterday. i haven't moved my display for more than a year until 2 days ago when i had shift my equipment. the display started blanking intermittently. i have managed to track it down to the rear leg position. i suspect there's a loose contact there since the display blanks out if i tilt it forward. time to call apple service..
I have this problem with a 17" LCD Studio Display. I just checked in here to see if the newer Cinema displays were also having the same problems. I guess I have my answer.
So I guess this must be a problem with Tiger and the Video circuitry that is acting up and it seems to affect all monitors.
did you get this only after upgrading to tiger? coincidentally this happened to me after i upgraded to tiger. then again i haven't shifted my display much for the past year. i will be very relieved if tiger is the cause.
Well, I have been reading a few messages from people in the OS X 10.4 forum who have been complaining about various abnormal display problems since upgrading to Tiger. Going momentarily black is definitely one of them. Others include streams of white pixels travelling across the screen at various intervals, and jumping/shifting of the image from time to time (I call it the 'Yips').
just upgraded to 10.4.1 and my display problems seem to have vanished. now i can tilt my display, push in the rear leg and the display doesn't black out. could core graphics have been the culprit?
About 3 months ago I had the same problem on a 22" ACD that I have had for over 2 years. It was doing all of the above.
Black screen, jumping, ghosting and what looks like the image burn you used to get on the old green and white displays of many years ago.
I had Apple pick it up for a warranty repair but they were unable to replicate the problem. I think it must have been something loose as I had also just moved the screen before it started doing it. I then think the engineer's car must have knocked it back into place!!
I will watch this thread to see if there are ways I can test the screen again and before it goes out of warranty!
There is a good probability it is the inverter board (more so if you see the power light flickering). Mine (purchased in 2002) has done this intermittently in the past (last time was approximately 4 months ago) and ironically, began acting up again today with a higher frequency level (sigh). I have previously isolated it to the display by putting it on another computer and experienced the same problem (thus eliminating the video card and any OS related issues).
In the past, I've normally been able to let the display sit unattached overnight and have it work normally for a period of time before it started going through the blanking again. Me thinks it isn't going to help this time around as the power light is blinking just like when the inverter in a 17" Studio Display went dead....
Oh, and the OS normally logs something like the following in /var/log/system.log when the blanking happens (looks like the loss of contact with the USB hub in the monitor).
I have exactly the same hardware. I just upgraded to Tiger. I've never had the display go black while I was using it, but after the display sleeps, we come back to the machine only to find that we can't "wake" the display. I know that some portions of the computer are waking, because I heard the hard drives spin up when I press a key. What's the deal?
Tody I bought a used 20" flat screen with the clear plastic housing. I checked it out and tested it in the store (which was 2 hours from my house) and it was in pristine condition. When I got home and started it, the power light came on, the speakers started up (they're plugged into the back of the display), the keyboard works -- and I got a flicker of a gray screen and then black. And it just stays that way. It's on, but I see black.
Every time I can get the gray screen for a moment (no mac symbol), and then nothing. I plug my old 15" clear plastic flat screen in, and it starts up fine! I'm stressing out that I'm going to return this to the 2-hours-away store and it's going to work just fine over there. I'm on a G4 Cube, and I don't have Tiger - I'm running OS 9.2
Any thoughts would be great - It's almost worth the money for me if I just hit this thing with a bat.
Before taking a bat to it, I would try resetting PRAM.
I have a Cube which has a 17" Studio Display LCD connected to the Nvidia graphics card and notice it does not profile correctly in the monitor control panel when in OS 9 (it thinks there is a CRT attached). When I boot back to OS X, the screen goes black (never had this problem when I had a Radeon in it). System is up since I can Timbuktu/ssh into it to shutdown cleanly.
Sometimes one PRAM reset does the trick but other times, it requires 3 consecutive tries (i.e. holding down the keys for 3 bongs). On other occasions, even that does not work and I need to disconnect the monitor for an hour. Complete voodoo style problem resolution.... (note: if you connect back the 15" to use your system and don't reset PRAM, it may happen again when connecting the 20" due to the different native resolutions).
Thanks for the advice, Hworld. I had it looked at today at the Apple Store, and they told me the 20" isn't compatible with the cube's graphics card. I never would've guessed.
Other than resetting the PRAM, are there repair options for a cinema display that blanks out from time to time. Are these interrupter problems, or something else? So far I've received conflicting reports from the Apple geniuses.
