I own a MacBook Pro 15.4″ unibody since mid January to which I regularly attach a Samsung Syncmaster 305T. However, the combination of this MacBook Pro and my display has caused a lot of problems, as can be seen on these pictures.
I have been in contact with AppleCare sine February about this problem and early May they decided something had to be wrong with my MacBook Pro and approved it for RMA. I got my MacBook Pro back two days ago, according to them fixed (they replaced the logicboard and a few other things).
However, the glitch is still present.
So I decided to head to downtown Enschede to the Xando, the Apple Premium Reseller which has been extremely helpful until now and see if we can figure out anything else. Thankfully, we managed to reproduce the same bug on an Apple ACD 30″ so the suggestion that the bug would be caused by an incompatibility has been nuked.
We called AppleCare again from Xando, retold the whole story and basically ‘they have no clue’. Neither Apple’s support officials, me or the people at Xando have a clue what might cause this. The AppleCare support official promised she would discuss this problem with here colleagues and call me back tomorow so for now we wait.
Ohw, if you want to see if you can reproduce the bug the requirements are as follows:
- 1 unibody MacBook Pro with a 9400 and a 9600GT graphics card
- 1 dual-link DVI display (aka 26″ or greater)
- 1 Apple Mini-Displayport-to-Dual-Link-DVI adapter
Connect the display with the adapter to the MacBook Pro in single display mode. Now, pull the power from your display, either by switching the display off or by pulling the power-cord. Wait 5-10sec. and then put the power back on the display and voila!
Whether this is a firmware issue with the MacBook Pro or the adapter/cable itself is unclear yet (and before anyone starts ranting, yes the converter cable has firmware since it needs to convert the displayport signal to DVI, this is quite different from DVI-to-VGA which is a plain hardware converter).
So for now I wait, pretty much baffled by this bug.
Update 1:
AppleCare contacted me today offering to fully replace my laptop with a new MacBook Pro as announced at WWDC ‘09.
The new configuration is the following:
- 2.8Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo (so +0.3Ghz compared to my current laptop)
- 4GB Ran
- 500GB HDD (+180GB compared to my current laptop)
- NVIDIA 9400GM 256MB and NVIDIA 9600GT 512MB (same as my current laptop)
- SD-card slot (bye bye ExpressCard)
Whether this will fix the issue still remains to be seen, I should be in the possession of my new MacBook Pro by wednesday afternoon so until then!
Update 2:
Today, 18-06-2009, I received my replacement MacBook Pro according to the specs detailed above. It took only the action of connecting the display to my MacBook Pro to reproduce the overlaying links bug depicted and another 5sec. to take my display offline and back online again to reproduce the ’snow’ bug. So I just mailed Apple Care again, let’s see how this continues…
Update 3:
Today (22-06-2009) my new Dual-Link DVI to Mini Displayport adapter came from Apple as a last resort hardware replacement. The support agent guaranteed me that this cable was tested and had another (possibly newer) firmware version than the one I currently owned. Doubtful it would work I connected the new cable to my display and turned the display on. Totally astonished and in complete shock, I was actually staring at a functional and correct output on my SyncMaster 305T. Assuming that this was only a temporary glitch and that the buggy output would be back any second now I started going over all the procedures I managed to figure out earlier on how to trigger the different display bugs I was having before. Amazingly, none of them work.
I have now been working for three hours on my SyncMaster 305T coupled with a new adapter from Apple and a WWDC09 issued configuration of the MacBook Pro and it seems to be working bringing an end to my 4 month running case with Apple Care…
When do you expect to ge the new Macbook Pro?
I’ve ordered the exact same laptop you’re getting from Apple, got to wait till the end of the month for delivery however. Although I won’t use external displays in the same way as you, I want to drive two external 19″ monitors, do you know if this is possible?
According to Apple I should have it probably by wednesday, if not thursday… I’ve been guaranteed I’ll get it before the weekend.
Sucks you have to wait ’till the end of the month, the Dutch Apple Store has them available with delivery within 24hrs now.
Two displays might get a bit trickier but it should certainly be doable. How though I do not know right now. Apple hasn’t released a mini-displayport to 2 DVI which is rather annoying because it should very well be possible to run 2 displays over the mini-displayport.
For now the only thing I can think about is Matrox’s DualHead2Go solution but that will limit you to VGA resolution so you can’t go above 1280×1024 on either display and it’s not that cheap…