The Apple Cinema 23" LCD Display

[dennis]

I have read the threads on your site pertaining to this display and let me just throw in that either this monitor defies being used to specification or something super simple is being overlooked.

When you install this display to an nVidia / DVI based card (I have the 5600), With of course, no monitor inf support, you get the default plug&play profile and unfortunately everything beyond 1600x1200 is disabled.

When you run power strip, and by the way power strip is a nice piece of work, the first sign of problem you see is a "corrupted" message when trying to read the DBID directly from the monitor.

You can navigate into the custom timing and resolution settings but if you set the timing to spec, you get the "one of the settings is not supported, recheck settings" message.  Personally, I have tried to generate custom settings both ignoring the warning and while not getting the warning.  Nothing seems to work and I suspect it has more to do with the underriding detection of the monitor during startup, putting the driver in a funk.

Anyway here is the help request; After 20 years of being anti-apple, I went out and bought the Apple Cinema 23" display because it said it is PC compatible and it is the best pixel/quality per dollar hi-res flatty out there.  Apple, being the evil idiots they are, did not include any PC compatible material not even an inf file.  

I bought the DVI to ADC adaptor, hooked everything up, and proceeded to get the default monitor results I described.  I ended up at your site downloading PowerStrip and buying it.  I have wrestled with PowerStrip but to no result.

I have installed and run MonInfo and it has succesfully (or it implies) read the monitor information including the DBID without error.  Is it really reading it from the monitor?

Do you know;  

1) How to get this damn monitor working (looks like the challenge of the week)
2) If there is in fact a monitor inf file for the PC available (the easy way out)
3) Why the hell a simple thing like a display would be so hard to deal with (2 years at Cornerstone, 4 years at Diamond, developing drivers tells me I'm missing something simple)

Dennis

[Rik Wang]

The fact that you need a DVI-to-ADC adapter makes nonsense of the PC compatibility claim, doesn't it?

I don't have any hands-on experience with ACDs, but someone at Apple sent over the timings which are labelled as such in PowerStrip. There used to be just one ACD, but now there are several - so that is part of the problem.

The EDID confusion come from the fact that PowerStrip and MonInfo can get the EDID from a number of sources: the Windows registry (placed there by a display driver), from the video BIOS (if its the primary monitor only, and only under NT4 and Win9x), or over the I2C bus. Modern graphics cards have more than one I2C bus, and MonInfo supports more of them than PowerStrip. Check the line in the MonInfo report that reads "Raw EDID" and you'll see an integer identifying the source.

1 = registry
2 = video BIOS
3 = I2C bus

You can trust MonInfo on this: if anything, it will overreport, providing both the I2C hardware report alongside the Windows report if there is the slightest discrepency.

Finally, we have the monitor.inf file, but that will go unused if there is an EDID. In other words, if the monitor is supplying data to the graphics card, the graphics card will ignore the inf file. The inf file is only used in the absense of an EDID.

So you're stuck with whatever Apple coded into the EDID.

[dennis]

Rik,

Thanks for the quick reply.  The important information, where is the EDID coming from, the code is 1, (video BIOS).    I further examined the registry and found that the EDID in the registry is the same as the one being reported from BIOS.  So to me, this means that display driver actually got the number from the registry.  When I first used Power Strip, I used the "Write custom monitor driver" option.  This is where the EDID originally came from.

In fact, when run display properties in windows and view the monitor info (advanced with the appropriate display selected), I see that the apple.inf (monitor driver file) that I generated is selected, but options such as "Hide modes this monitor cannot display" are grayed out.  Also, in the registry are multiple "default monitor" entries in the enum section of the system profile, that have "BAD_EDID" entries.  Obviously these are failed attempts at the system/driver level to do a plug&play install.

So all things thought through to this point, if you do have an inf file for the apple Cinema 23" display, I would greatly appreciate a copy of it.   Let me know....

Dennis

[Rik Wang]

Dennis - 1 means registry, not video BIOS. Video BIOS isn't available under 2k/XP. That's why the MonInfo data and registry data is the same.

And the display driver doesn't get the EDID from the registry; it puts it there. Windows requires that all display drivers implement a set of I2C callbacks, which it uses to get access to the EDID.

The number of BAD_EDIDs is meaningless unless your system is fresh. Mine has *dozens* of these, simply because I've used dozens of graphics cards and monitors with my current OS installation, and many of them were with BNC cables.

A custom inf isn't going to be any better or worse than one you create yourself with PowerStrip. Open one up in a text editor and you'll see what I mean. They just specify a range of rfrequencies, and a maximum resolution. But - again - if the monitor is providing an EDID the display driver won't use the inf file anyway...

[dennis]

Rick,

Well for me this is coming down to the same thing that I have read in other threads where people are asking for help.

Do you have any insight into why the display resolves to its capabilities not being exposed in the control panel?  And do you have any insight into why an effective custom resolution configuration cannot be created with your software?

You don't seem to have any answers.  You promote knowledge of a vast number of chipsets and drivers but you aren't telling me anything helpful here.  Even in your last reply, you only restate what I said "the edid is coming from the registry".

If you have no idea what to do or how to apply your software tools towards a solution, please say so.

Dennis

[Rik Wang]

If you have no idea what to do or how to apply your software tools towards a solution, please say so.

Alright then, I have no idea. Apple says they need this kind of signal. PowerStrip can get NVidia hardware to generate this kind of signal. If the Apple doesn't like the signal it asks for, there is nothing I can do about it.

I'm afraid, as I said at the very beginning, I have no hands on experence with the ACDs.

[dennis]

Rik,

I appreciate your response.  Your tool is a nice piece of work and I do intend to include it in figuring out the apple thing.

I'll keep you updated.  One thing that would be nice and fitting for your software would be a library of solutions.  That way people could build on the successes of finding settings and solutions using your software.

I'll give you the details when I get this thing all figured out, so that others may suffer less.

Dennis

[BrianH]

Rik
I have exactly the same problem as your threads on problems getting the native resolution with Apple 20"/23” monitor, except mine is a Formac 1740 running on a ShuttleX FN412 with a nVidia FX5200 card. I am offered 1024 x 768 but not 1280 x 1024, the native resolution. I have tried uncapping the monitor, and I am offered a wider range that includes 1024 x 1280 but not 1280 x 1024. Yet Advanced timing settings suggests that I have 1280 active horizontal pixels and 1024 Vertical. If I remove the nVidia FX5200 software, I do get 1280 x 1024, but very sluggish graphics. The strange thing is that I have had everything working Ok for a period but then it spontaneously reverts to this problem – I thought I knew how to cure the problem (deleting nVidia drivers, unplugging board, booting, closing, reinstalling) but that doesn’t seem to work now. This seems to be a common problem – is nVidia aware of it?

Brian


Brian Hills

[Rik Wang]

Guys - NVidia has a forum, and they ca sometimes be responsive to very specific, concisely stated problems. Give them a try... And do keep me informed. If there is something that can be done on this end, I'll do it.

[BrianH]

Rik

Thanks, but nVidia doesn't seem to run its own forum. Can you recommend one?

Brian

[dakos]

Did any of you try the Gefen VGA to ADC converter ?

http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=1301

or the DVI to ADC ?

http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=1203

They are quite expensive but dsigned exactly for that, it would be extrimly nice to be able to do that in software using PowerStrip but I'm not sure it's possible.

Back to you Rik...

[BrianH]

Dakos

I'm using the Formac DVI to ADC converter, which I guess is badged as it is made in Taiwan.

Brian

[Anonymous]

Ok so now I have read every webpage with the words DVI, PC, and Apple Cinema that I could find.

I learned alot of things but I would say this guy had put it the simplest;

http://www.gubbe.ch/linux/dev-cinema23.php

What it boils down to is that he found quite a bit of variation in support between display cards.  Note from his findings that it's not the display chip that he sites but the card manufacturers.

So with this in mind, I tried two additional different display cards.  I tried another nVidia based card with no luck, then I tried an ATI brand ATI 9600 display card.  Well the card works great.  All modes on the apple cinema work fine and there are no ill artifacts such as bad EDIDs or unknown displays in the registry.

So that's it guys.  This makes sense especially after reading a web page about the DVI standard and the lack of adherence that is being seen in, mostly the TV industry but in general.

I used this card: ATI Radeon 9600XT.
I used the Apple ADC-DVI converter.

Everything works great now.

Dennis

[Anonymous]

I am running an Apple 23" Cinema Display with a NVidia Quadro4 900 XGL card...at full 1920x1200...it works great.

I am also running a 22" ACD with another NVidia card.

Oddly enough - one of the cards works from boot up to winXP initialisation.
The other one only wakes up the monitor when XP inits.

Strange but true

s.

[BrianH]

Rik

Have you made any progress with this yet? I have found that I can get Native Resolution on my Formac 1720 if I install the FX5200 drivers with a second screen (TV) activated. However, when I move my system to my office with no TV attached, then it reverts back to my old problems of not being able to get 1280 x 1024.

Brian