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My Macbook Pro, the Single Link DVI cable and the Not so Genius Apple Bar

by Justin Ball on March 1st, 2009

I and Callie took the kids to Salt Lake a while back so they could go to the Children's Museum at the Gateway. They had a great time. At the end of the day we wandered around the area a bit and since there is an Apple store I dropped in to see if they could solve my problem.

I told my wife it would only be a few minutes. Several hours later a finally got to talk to some high school kid that knew how to turn on the Mac and crop a photo in Photoshop but other than that they were pretty worthless. At least the store looks cool.

My journey to the Apple store started when I switched my monitory input. I have a 24" Dell monitor and I plug my Macbook Pro into that. As long as I used my DVI to VGA adapter the Macbook Pro would automatically detect when the monitor was plugged in. I figured that since I used my Mac almost exclusively these days I would use the DVI input for the better picture. However, when I started plugging directly into the DVI cable the Macbook Pro no longer recognized when the monitor was plugged in or not plugged in. This is a minor annoyance, but it bugged me so I determined to find a solution which is how I ended up at the Apple store.

They were no help at all and wasted a lot of my time and my poor wife had to wander around the gateway with the kids while I waited (Of course they couldn't let me leave the store and just call my cell. I had to sit there). Did I mentioned that my trip to the Apple store was a total waste?

I had guessed for a while that it might have something to do with the cable. I being cheap didn't want to buy a new one (I know I should have borrowed one) to test. I just assumed that the Apple geeks would know whether or not a cable would matter. They didn't.

It turns out the cable is the issue. So if you find that your Mac doesn't automatically recognize the monitor check the cable. It won't work with a single link DVI cable, but will work with a dual link DVI cable.

Here's a single link DVI cable. You don't want this one:
Single Link DVI cable

Here's a Dual link DVI cable. You do want this one:
Dual Link DVI Cable

The only visible difference is the pin count. The Single link DVI doesn't have the pins in the middle.

I bought this one from Amazon and it worked great.

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From Computers

  • donut
    I have a Penryn 15" Macbook Pro with dual-link DVI, running 10.6.2 trying to setup KVM switch.

    First and foremost, Apple is full of BS on this page - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3571 Let's be honest here, single-link DVI gets everyone else in the world maximum resolution of 1920x1280, why does Apple have to be special and only support 1280x800?

    That aside, I have single link DVI-D connecting from Macbook to KVM, from KVM to monitor. After I restart the Macbook, needless to say, it does this 1280x800 thing... or rather, the external display's native resolution of 1680x1024 shows nothing unless I crank the resolution way down. However, not all hope is lost. As I put the laptop into "clam-shell mode," and patiently wait a little while (a minute or so), guess what? Apple's theoretical maximum of 1280x800 over single-link DVI suddenly becomes 1680x1024 and all works as expected. At this point, I can open the Macbook again and I can view both screens at native resolution.

    This only points to one thing - it's a software problem somewhere between Mac OS kernel and the graphics card driver, and Apple is too lazy to find the bug. And another piece of news is, I found a consistent work-around, which in my world, should help trap the software bug... but of course that also means the bug can be ignored since there is a work-around...
  • jbasdf
    I've been called a lot of things but never a marriage counselor. Glad I could help!
  • Geoff
    My wife and I were ready to throw in the towel after 2 hours of determining the problem. Then I found your post online, picked up a gold-plated dual-link cable for ~$8 and it worked beautifully.

    Thanks for practically saving my marriage!

    Cheers,

    geoff
  • Javier
    In the end my problem was that my MBP video card was dying (It is a NVidia 8600 GT). I've got it back from repairs and it works just fine now using the Dell provided cable + the 2209wa.
  • atze
    My MacBook Pro 17 used to connect with the single link cable (that came with the machine) until 15 minutes ago. I opened the cover and the second monitor stayed black. I can not get it to connect again. So my best bet is that something in the OS flipped a bad bit on our machines.
  • ROB DONE
    OMG!! I've been struggling for about a month to get my new Dell monitors to work with my Mac Pro and have drawn a blank, like you have spent time at Mac store, on the phone and in forums with Dell and Mac and have drawn a blank. I've finally decided to send them back but it was too late. Thanks for the tip I'm going to get the cable and will let you know the result.

    Thanks

    Rob

    Berkshire, UK.
  • The 24" is 1600X1200, but I don't think the resolution is the problem. I think that the Mac uses something in the connector to detect whether or not you are connected to an external monitor. Try borrowing a cable from a buddy to see if it works.
  • Javier
    What is the Dell 24'' resolution? I have the same problem, DVI doesn't work + VGA adapter works fine, but I am connecting to a 22'' (1680x1050) Dell monitor. I should not be necessary to use a dual link DVI cable at 1680x1050 resolution
  • Clay
    Justin, all of my DVI cables have the pin count shown in your pic of the single link cable. The Apple cinema display detects perfectly. The Apple DVI-to-Component Video cable detects perfectly. The Samsung 22" LCD monitor also detected correctly, but the color settings did behave weirdly at times.

    I wonder if your problem was a combo of Dell drivers and the cable, and not the cable alone.
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