G4 Digital Audio and 20" (A1038) Cinema Display -- goes blank on bootup

Hi folks,

I've got a G4 Digital Audio which works great with a CRT monitor.

Yesterday I picked up an A1038 20" Cinema Display (the one with an ADC connector).

When I plug the Cinema Display into my graphics card and power on the G4, it shows me a happy Mac for a few seconds, then the screen goes black. Seems to happen at about the same time it changes from the Happy Mac to the OS X logo.

I've done a fair bit of Google searching for a solution:

- zapped the PRAM, same result
- cleared the PMU by unplugging all the cables and pressing the CUDA button once, waiting ten seconds, and plugging everything back in. Same result.
- Booted into single user mode, mounted the file system, and deleted the file /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist and rebooted -- same result.
- Booted from the OS X 10.1 CD; same result.

Nothing I've tried has worked; the display works great while the Happy Mac is on the screen, then goes blank. The display power light stays on, but the display seems to go completely blank (not just the backlight turning off, but no picture at all -- I shined a bright light on the screen and can't see any picture at all).

Note that I don't think the problem is with the display itself because when I boot into single user mode, it stays on for as long as I want it to.

I also am unable to drive the CRT monitor if the Cinema Display is plugged in; it seems to be one or the other.

Is there something else I can try?

Hi, unfortunately I don't -- the only other card I have has a DFP connector and not an ADC connector.

I do have a G5 on its way to me and it does have a card with an ADC connector, but of course that's a PCIe card. But it'll hopefully give me more evidence that it's not the display itself that's the problem.

I suppose I could try to pick up another cheap graphics card for the G4 that has an ADC connector.

I looked at the available resolutions (using my CRT monitor) and none of them seem to be supported by this display, which may be the issue. The ones OS X 10.1 wants to let me use with the CRT are the standard ones (800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, etc). The resolutions this Cinema Display supports, apparently, are 1024 by 640, 1280 by 800, and 1680 by 1050 (optimum) -- none of which is offered by the control panel.

Just to try, I set the resolution to 800x600, shut the system down, and reconnected the flat panel and got the same result as before.

Same result when trying to boot into safe mode.

There's no software installed; just a clean install of OS 9.2.1 and OS X 10.1.2.

Yes, able to boot into 9.2.1 with the CRT monitor; can't get anything to display with the Cinema Display.

I hope I don't need to go that deeply into this project to make this thing work, but it does sound fun.

I'm going to try installing 10.4.11 and see if that makes any difference. I had a hunch that since this monitor wasn't released until early 2003, maybe running an OS released after that (rather than 10.1) will make things play better. Who knows.

Haven't had any success attempting to get 10.4 or 10.5 installed so far (no media I've found actually boots on this machine).

I'll try SwitchRes/X, thanks!