Mac Mini Won't Boot with VGA Monitor Connected

I have a new Mac Mini connected to an older VGA monitor using the Apple brand VGA adapter. The mini is fully up to date and runs perfectly when booted. However, if I reboot the mini with the VGA monitor connected, it fails to boot. I just hear the faint chime sound every other second. There is no output to the monitor and the only way I can get it to boot is to disconnect the monitor and then power cycle the mini. I can reconnect the monitor just seconds after powering back on and it finishes booting properly.
Anyone else experience this? It is very frustrating. I've also tested with an HDMI connected monitor (without the VGA adapter) and it boots just fine and the display works properly.
Thanks!

Okay, I'm back with good news: I have found two remedies for the problem which will hopefully solve it for you as well.
Given that the issue only occurs when certain monitors are connected, I concluded that the root of it must be a bug in the Mac's firmware related to DDC (Display Data Channel) handling, and that the most promising way to address it should be to just disable the DDC.
Workaround #1: If your monitor has BNC connectors, use a VGA to BNC cable.
In this configuration the DDC pins are not connected to the monitor at all. This did indeed fix the problem - my Mac mini booted without a problem with the monitor connected. However, I was not completely satisfied with this solution, because VGA to BNC cables are usually quite heavy and inflexible, and do no go together well with Apple's MDP to VGA adapter and the Mini Displayport/Thunderbolt port which has no locking mechanism.
Workaround #2: Remove pin 12 of the VGA plug.
Pin 12 of the VGA plug connects the serial data line of the DDC. Pulling out this pin with a pair of needle nose pliers will effectively disable DDC. I hesitated to do this to my cable (a direct MDP to VGA cable which eliminates the need for a separate adapter dangling from the Mac) and therefore bought a tiny VGA male to female adapter (also called port saver, e.g. Delock 65250) to perform the surgery on that. This has done the trick and my Mac mini has started up fine ever since.
Of course, without DDC the Mac won't know the model name and capabilities of the attached monitor and thus offer some resolution and frequency settings which the monitor may not support, but that's a small drawback compared to having to pull out the monitor cable everytime you turn on or restart your Mac.

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Message was edited by: Yijian Cao

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Welcome to Apple Discussions!
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Fix The Bugs Please wrote:
It is unlikely to be a hardware failure as the Mac Mini was made in May 2014 and I bought factory refurbished. It seems to be an issue relating to the SSD as it boots other drives.
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DDC block report generated by SwitchResX for display
VGA/SVGA Display
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
0 | 00 FF FF FF FF FF FF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1 | 0A 0A 01 01 0C 1E 17 BE E8 2D C9 A0 57 47 98 27
2 | 12 48 4C 00 00 00 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
3 | 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
4 | 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
5 | 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
6 | 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01
7 | 01 01 01 01 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 20
Valid DDC block: checksum passed
EDID Version........1.1
Manufacturer........@@@
Product Code........0 (0000) (0000)
Serial Number.......0
Manufactured........Week 10 of year 2000
Max H Size..........30 cm
Max V Size..........23 cm
Gamma...............2.90
DPMS Supported Features:
Active off Suspend Standby
Display type:
RGB color display
</pre>
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Jeff

Hi BSteely,
Thanks for taking the time to look into this.
The blue screen I see is definitely not being generated by the LCD - it's coming from the Mac. It's coming up just after the gray Apple logo you see when booting. Normally you'd next see the finder pop up, but that never happens as long as the KVM is plugged into the mac (and it's only the VGA connection which is doing this, since the same thing happens with the keyboard/mouse unplugged from the mac). Once I remove the VGA cable, it continues to boot normally. If I hookup the LCD directly to the mac, it also boot normally.
Sorry I wasn't clear about VNC. I'm not seeing two displays at once, I'm seeing two different displays -- one when the kvm is on the mac's channel, and another when it switches away. Funny enough, I'm getting MORE resolution choices when I'm not on channel. The DDC info I posted above is for when I'm on channel.
Jeff

Mac Mini Won't Boot with VGA Monitor Connected

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