Monitor question

[gavspen]

Hi All,

I have an old (I mean old) Samsung Syncmaster 193s monitor which has been my second monitor on the Mac Mini. It was fine till this morning, but now it shows a pic for about 1 second and then goes black. Power it off and on and it does the same thing over and over.

It kind of seems like the mac mini is seeing two monitors, since I can move the mouse off of the main monitor onto the second on, if you see what I mean. If the mac didnt "see" the second monitor, then the mouse would stop at the edge of the first monitor, but it doesnt.

I just installed Sequoia, but I dont think that's the problem since I just hooked it up to an older Mac and it behaves the same way.

I know you had a monitor thing after installing 15.2 James, but that was a mirroring thing, right? And Mike, you had something similar, didnt you? Did you solve it?

Thanks,
Gavin

[mikehalloran]

Sounds like a bad monitor but I would call Apple and have them do a screen share to go through the settings.

[mothra]

Shine a light on the display, can you still see your desktop? Sounds like the backlight might be going out. When the monitors start up, the 'TCON' does a quick POST test and if it hits any anomalies with the backlight or the panel itself, it will shut it off. If the Mac still sees the monitor, it's still getting an input signal from the display, the display is still up and running, it's the actual panel that is off in this case.

If you can see your desktop, it's the backlight, if you can't see the desktop, that means the whole panel itself is shutting off. I work for ViewSonic and deal with our larger displays, when we see this it's kind of a 50/50 shot whether a new TCON fixes it, or if something in the panel assembly itself is toast. We don't service the panels onsite like we do other repairs and just replace the whole unit heh.

[gavspen]

Thanks, Mothra, for this detailed analysis.

I dont see anything when I shine a light on it except the reflection of the light. I dont quite understand what the TCON is, but whatever the case, this thing aint worth fixing, given it's age and the price of monitors these days (excluding Apple displays, that is!)

I think Mike's right, It's a goner.

Thanks

[mothra]

Yeah if there's no display at all (or even if the backlight just goes out) they're pretty much toast.

There isn't much inside a desktop monitor really. The display panel is easy but, it's a one piece assembly with the digitizer/inverter/backlight/etc. If any part of that goes, the whole panel needs to come out. Those parts for end users are usually as much if not more than a new monitor would run you. Otherwise there's usually only 1 or 2 boards inside that do the rest. Power and main board is usually one and the same for units that come with a brick PSU. Sometimes the TCON, which drives the display panel, is part of it too, sometimes it's a separate board.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

FWIW... my 30' Apple Cinema started doing exactly the same thing. Flashing on and off but never long enough to click any buttons. After some research, I discovered that connecting or disconnecting a USB cable can cause the problem and screw up the USB system. (I'm on Mojave and always will be.)

So I pulled everything off the Mac, moved the computer to the dining room table and plugged in the Cinema display. Worked fine. Plugged everything else in and it is still working fine. The only side effect is that my wife keeps bugging me to move everything back into the studio, but how can I? With coffee being so close now.

Seriously, at least try that/this, which is what saved me:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2736755

[mikehalloran]

USB going to sleep has been an issue for me since the G5. I recently bought some USB-C adapters so that I can plug my USB 2/3.0 hub and my iLok directly into TB4/3/USB4 ports of my M2 Studio Ultra. It will be interesting to see if this changes anything.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CVX3516?re ... title&th=1