Aluminium Mac Pro to HDMI

[Dave B]

Awooga Awooga!!

Gents, we need a proper mac head and not a faker like me

Zukan has been loaned an older Mac Pro (8 core aluminium) and the graphics card seems to have 2 dvi outputs and no displayport. Searching through my collection of random assorted mac connectors, I have a couple of (what look like) DVI to HDMI adapters.

1. So, do we just need a standard DVI - DVI cable (male to male) to go from the Mac Pro to the monitor? Or is there some subtlety that we are missing?

2. Someone else wondered about possibly needing an upscaler to go dvi to hdmi? Does this ring any bells.

3. Er .. anything else we should know ??

Cheers

[The Korff]

Unless you've got a very hi-res monitor, a simple DVI-DVI cable should be fine.

Couple of things to be aware of though... Some older Macs had a kind of extra-wide DVI-looking connector, designed to plug into the old plastic-surround Apple displays, and which provided both power and video info to the monitor. Now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure that only applied to the G5 Power Macs though, so you're unlikely to run into an issue there.

The other thing is, if you're using a very hi-res monitor (4k, say, or maybe even 1440p?), the graphics card may not be up to the task of displaying its native resolution, which may end up looking a bit crap. If that's the case, it should at least work (albeit at a lower res than the monitor would like), and it shouldn't be a biggie to swap out a better graphics card that can handle the hi-res monitor (in fact, I may even have one kicking around if needs be).

Cheers!

Chris

[Studio Support Gnome]

I have a selection of HDMI/DVI/MDP/VGA adaptors and cables...

yell if you need anything.... I kind of know what I'm doing with these things...

[Dave B]

Cheers Max - might tap you up later. Apparently he's got something happening over good old vga to begin with.

Ta all.

[Forum Admin]

Some older Macs had a kind of extra-wide DVI-looking connector, designed to plug into the old plastic-surround Apple displays, and which provided both power and video info to the monitor.

Yes, it was called Apple Display Connector (ADC) and was last used on the G5 (mine is used as a doorstop nowadays).

Wikipedia: "The Apple Display Connector (ADC) is a proprietary modification of the DVI connector that combines analog and digital video signals, USB, and power all in one cable. Apple used ADC for its LCD-based Apple Cinema Displays and their final CRT displays, before deciding to use standard DVI connectors on later models."