My Mac Studio arrives before my display, so I figured I work off my thunderbolt monitor in the meantime. This monitor was my secondary display from my iMac. I plugged it in via the adapter and it cuts off every 2-4 seconds (blinking off and on). I tested the monitor on my intel laptop and no issues. Works fine on my iMac as well. Could there be something wrong with my Mac Studio?
That setup is supposed to be well supported.
The ThunderBolt-3 <-> ThunderBolt-2 adapter does not support any other kinds of display beyond genuine ThunderBolt displays (even with adapters), but genuine ThunderBolt displays are said to be well supported.
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The ThunderBolt display is sometimes mistaken for the Apple Cinema Display LED that has a two-headed cable with Mini DisplayPort and USB-A ends in one cable assembly. The one is NOT supposed by the ThunderBolt adapter.
That setup is supposed to be well supported.
The ThunderBolt-3 <-> ThunderBolt-2 adapter does not support any other kinds of display beyond genuine ThunderBolt displays (even with adapters), but genuine ThunderBolt displays are said to be well supported.
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The ThunderBolt display is sometimes mistaken for the Apple Cinema Display LED that has a two-headed cable with Mini DisplayPort and USB-A ends in one cable assembly. The one is NOT supposed by the ThunderBolt adapter.
More recent Macs appear to be paying attention to errors generated when sending data to the display.
At high resolutions and refresh rates, exactly what cables and how long they are can also be a factor.
As an experiment, try reducing the resolution or refresh rate and see if the blinking abates.
lowering the resolution would reduce the data rate, and if the cables were not quite good enough, should make the blinking problem stop.
what Make&Model display?
exactly what cables, adapters and docks are you using to make the connection? please mention EVERY item.
Apple Cinema Thunderbolt Display. Using a new authentic Apple Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter. No docs, no preferirlas. Just straight into the Mac. I have a call scheduled in a hour with Apple Support, let’s see what they say.
Sorry to hear this, very odd, is it a genuine Apple adaptor you are using?
I was planning to use my TB 27 monitor with the Mac Studio
Maybe the diagnostic can find something.
But remember, "No Fault Found" does NOT mean "all is well"
On a side note, after I plugged in the monitor on initial set up (hello screen) and noticed the blinking, I thought that if I migrated my data over from my Time Machine that maybe it might help. I began the process and about a quarter of the way through, migration assistant stopped with some memory error (I did not note the exact error). I had to force quit and restart. I don’t think the issues are related but so far I haven’t had much luck with this machine out the box.
Works fine with my MBA M1 and my Mac Mini M1 so not sure why it would not work with the Studio.
Thanks for the feedback. I’ve been speaking to apple for a few days, it’s at the engineering level now.
lowering the resolution has been attempted. You cannot change refresh rate on this monitor.
Thunderbolt display blinking on new Mac Studio
