That SAGA of the used HD 7950 and 4K!!! :)

[James Steele]

Making bootable USB Mojave Installer. Sigh.

[James Steele]

Well this has been one giant kick in the teeth. Weird. I could work along happily with the 4K TV seemingly for hours, but if I walk away from my computer and let it sit for 20 minutes it would freeze up. I've tried all sort sorts of things and nothing has worked. I finally decided to go back to my old setup with the 23" and 30" Cinema Displays and then do this test again. Note that the 23" Cinema by itself had no problem. Only when the 4K TV was connected did this seem to happen. I even tried running it at 30Hz and it still made it about a half our and froze up.

So, I'm going back to my old setup and let it sit and see if it locks up. If it doesn't, I try to borrow another graphics card and see if my card is the culprit before I just return the TV to Costco. If it DOES lock up, then it might be the motivation I'll need to do a format and clean install of my boot drive. I could also reconnect the 4K TV and then boot off the cloned startup drive on a spinner and see if it happens. If not might be some disk corruption?

Where it stands now is I'm back to my old setup and about to test to see if it can sit and not freeze. Just want my studio back. Such a shame... I was loving all that screen real estate.

[monkey man]

Is there a sleep option in the power-saving settings of the telemavision?

[James Steele]

Is there a sleep option in the power-saving settings of the telemavision?

Yeah... it's turned off. Believe me, I covered all the obvious possibilities right off. Best I can guess is that the graphics card does not like the mDP to HDMI adapter maybe? The built in actual HDMI port on the card is non-functional as they stop working when you flash a PC version card to have a boot screen for Mac. I have a hunch another card might work... one that has a working HDMI port. Might just be some glitch in the used flashed card I bought on Craigslist? I'm exhausted... been up since yesterday. I went back to my old monitor setup and am leaving it sitting to see if it freezes. I hoping it doesn't so I can just move forward for now and just get by with what I have until I can afford a newer more powerful MacMini for example... and the audio interfaces I'll need to go with it since mine are PCIe-based. I can return the TV to Costco near me and get my money back.

Such a shame. It was so awesome having all that screen real estate.

[James Steele]

So I returned to my setup with my 23" Cinema connected to the DVI connector as it's been the whole time, and instead of the 4K Samsung put my 30" Cinema back where it was, connected to the mDP output by way of an active mDP to Dual Link DVI adapter. I loaded a DP project and walked away and left it for over and our. Came back... screen saver was on still and I hit playback by using the transport control on my MC Control and immediately DP started playing back while the monitors stayed on screensaver until I tapped the Mac keyboard. Solid as a rock. Sigh.

I just checked their website and Costco allows you up to (an astounding) 90 days to return TVs, so I *might* be inclined to try other graphics cards if I can beg, borrow, or steal them to find what will work for my setup. I really was loving that large monitor. I have a hunch maybe a LEGIT Mac version of the card with a working HDMI port would likely be the ticket... but I can't just throw money at the problem indefinitely.

At least I can move on. If I can't do 4k, I'm going to stress test same setup and connect up an HDTV I have with one of the mDP to HDMI adapters. I have a feeling 1920x1080 isn't going to make things come crashing down. That will at least give me some additional screen real estate.

[monkey man]

Swapped HDMI cables, Jimbo?

I've seen some weird behaviours in my time. Right now the one from my 2011 MacBook Pro (via inline adapter) to the telemavision glitches with a nasty spike every now and again. It's been fine since 2011 and this only began recently. Best HDMI cable I've ever bought - one of those fancy braided, multicore "ribbon" jobs, and yet it's now failing after many years of simply sitting there undisturbed, doing its job.

[HCMarkus]

James, you can borrow an RX460 from me; I have two, one is sitting in my spare 5,1 Mac Pro. I'm around all day today.

Good excuse for you to come over for a bit of a hang!

[James Steele]

Swapped HDMI cables, Jimbo?

I've seen some weird behaviours in my time. Right now the one from my 2011 MacBook Pro (via inline adapter) to the telemavision glitches with a nasty spike every now and again. It's been fine since 2011 and this only began recently. Best HDMI cable I've ever bought - one of those fancy braided, multicore "ribbon" jobs, and yet it's now failing after many years of simply sitting there undisturbed, doing its job.

That’s an interesting thought. I think it was a very average cable and maybe not rated for 4K. I may give that a whirl. I have a high quality cable connecting my FireTV Cube to my 65” Samsung in my living room. Be interesting to see if some sort of spike could cause that. I can’t understand how while simply sitting idle it would seize up the Mac however.

[James Steele]

James, you can borrow an RX460 from me; I have two, one is sitting in my spare 5,1 Mac Pro. I'm around all day today.

Good excuse for you to come over for a bit of a hang!

Hey thanks so much good sir! I missed your call as I had a late night and was sleeping in. May have to try that tomorrow after a job gets over about noon. I would only need it for a couple hours. The idea is just to find out what works and then I know and I can set out to find one of those. I’m a little unnerved by not having a boot screen… having that capability the last couple days really saved my butt… but I have a couple old GT120s sitting around that if I ever get in a desperate spot I suppose I could throw one in to get the boot screen? I’ll be in touch. Thanks so much!

[James Steele]

Swapped HDMI cables, Jimbo?

Monkey man.... it might be too early to tell, but you MAY have hit up on it and I'm gonna feel really stupid for overlooking this if it turns out to be the case. I was up late so I drug myself out of bed after your message and I pulled off a really thick braided cable with high end connectors that I bought on Amazon for my FireTV Cube connected to my 65" Samsung in my living room. I connected the 43" Samsung in my studio with that and I booted up the computer (using my power up sequence as normal) and then walked away. Keep in mind, I had no peripherals turned on... just the Mac. I also didn't run DP and load a project... (don't really think it's DP anyway. First time it happened I was backing up with Carbon Copy Cloner.). I just let it boot and walked away.

That was 9:40am. It's now 10:36am and system has NOT froze.

So... step TWO. I'm going to shut her down. Turn on all peripherals, audio interfaces, MC Control, Console 1, Liquid Mix, and my RAID attached to my RocketRaid card and repeat this test.

There IS one other possibility that might account for things being okay before I know I'm out of the woods. Power. I have one 20 amp circuit in the room. I have everything connected to a Tripp Lite power conditioner and voltage regulator. It's heavy duty and it does produce makeup voltage during sags, but it's not a so-called true sine wave power supply and it does makeup voltage in steps... so if it drops to 114v as an example, it will kick it up to 124. Anyway... I'm quite hopeful at this point. And going into the studio to shut her down, then turn EVERYTHING ON like in the "real world" and boot her up and let her sit.

I will be thrilled, albeit it very embarrassed, if it came down to something as simple as the cable but it might. I was using some basic cable with molded connectors that may have only been rated for standard HD. The cable I'm using now was rated for 4K and much higher quality.

NOTE: The test was at 30Hz, as is the one I just started with all the peripherals turned on. But I can live with that. If I make it an hour with everything turned on, I’ll repeat at 60Hz, but even if not, I can live with 30Hz. Wouldn’t it be something if it was the cable… some strange spike while idling?

[James Steele]

Well... can you BELIEVE it!!?? Monkey Man... saves the day. Much to my pleasure—and simultaneous chagrin—it looks as if it was nothing more than a cheap/bad HDMI cable!! How odd that it would cause a failure by sitting and idling! The higher quality cable I took from my living room TV seems to have done the trick. It wasn't even that expensive.. $10. I just ordered another one.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073R8M49G/

Amazing. So glad I didn't do a clean install! Also embarrassed I didn't think to try this myself. Again, you'd think a problem would manifest when working or when the system is under load rather than fail while just idling. I'm setting the 4KTV back on my desk as if it's finally going to LIVE there. I'll repeat my experiment at 60Hz just to see, but AFAIC if I have to live with 30Hz it's a fair exchange for all the screen real estate. Again, just amazed that the solution ended up being so basic/simple.

Monkey Man... my hero!!!

[James Steele]

More interesting data points:

When 4KTV is attached now with better cable I don't need to delay powerup for it to boot if it's set to 30Hz. (May not have had to even before.)

It does appear that I DO need to delay powering up the 4KTV when set to 60Hz. Which is no big deal. About to start another "idle test" with it set to the 60Hz refresh rate and DP11 idling with a project open. It already passed with 30Hz and I have a feeling I'm going to be good with 60Hz now. I'll be ecstatic if I can run this all the time at 60Hz! This additional workspace area is just wonderful... yet at the same time it's interesting how QUICKLY we become accustomed to it. When I dejectedly decided to switch back to my 30" Cinema Display, I felt like I was looking through a porthole!

BTW, I'm going incrementally increase the load on the system. If my 60Hz test goes well, I'm going to have a spare 1080 HDTV off this graphics card to be dedicated primary to the Movie Window. I did that already, but never tested it for the idling crashing. Again, amazing that a better quality HDMI cable may have saved the day here.

[James Steele]

The 60Hz idle test was a fail. I'm assuming I still have 30Hz to fall back on. Repeating the test at 50Hz.

[James Steele]

50Hz idle test was also a fail. Going to repeat the 30Hz test to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

If that works and I want to split hairs, I could always install SwitchResX and try for 40 or some odd refresh rate assuming the Samsung can handle it.

[James Steele]

Well this is interesting... just failed the idle test at 30Hz!! Made it only about 25 minutes. Quick check of heat inside:



That one diode seems significantly warmer than anything else. I'm now considering that maybe heat *is* a factor. Consider that my first couple of tests happened in the morning after my Mac had been off for 8 hours or so and it was conducted in the cool morning hours. It's warmed up now, and I've been running the machine constantly with no extended breaks between the tests.

I'm going to run another test now at 30Hz and manually set the fan speed to something crazy like 2K or higher constant to keep temperature lower and then see if it passes. If that's the case, I'll open up the case and inspect... maybe a fan isn't working... maybe there's a thermal solution... or maybe I need a different card. HC Markus, I may be borrowing that card from you tomorrow afternoon. I know it does not create a lot of heat.