can my new acer 23" monitor work with my 2.2G 2007 circa Macbook? no luck so far...

I just bought an Acer 23" model monitor and it doesn't recognize on my 2.2G circa 2007 Macbook (no pro). I have a mini-DVI to HDMI adaptor and I have tried differnet video formats to see if the Mac will 'recognize' the monitor, plugged into HDMI 1. I'm shocked that a 'dummy' monitor will not allow me to display from my Mac. How do I get it (my Mc) to recognize the output?