External monitor only with iBook

Is there a way to use the iBook as a desktop having the display on an external monitor? I know I can connect via the video out port, but can I put the iBook lid down and use a USB keyboard? For some reason I remember being able to use the laptop like this back in the OS 8 days, but recall how to do it. TIA. CS.

You should not operate your iBook (Dual USB) computer with the lid closed.
Outside of that, you should be able to use it with an external monitor and a USB keyboard just fine.

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External monitor flicker with ibook G3

I plugged in an external monitor into my iBook G3. At the highest resolution it flickers/ shakes. Is there anything I can do to resolve this?
Thanks,
Jacob

Is the monitor set at the same resolution as the iBook?

External monitor only works with clam shell open

external monitor only works with clam shell open

Are you using the method in this Apple article? If you do, it should work.
Mac notebooks: How to use your computer in closed clamshell (display closed) mode with an external display

External monitor for 12" iBook G4 800MHz

My iBook G4 800MHz has recently been promoted to being my main desktop computer. I am in the market for an external monitor that will work well with it. Does anyone who has direct experience with attaching external monitors to the iBook G4 have any advice?
So far, I have learned that it will not support any more than 1024x768. However, most of the monitors I've seen are listed at higher than that. Will these monitors work with it, albeit at the lower resolution? This ViewSonic, in particular, has caught my eye. I use a ViewSonic at work (with a Windows PC) and I'm very happy with it so I was leaning in that direction.
I also understand about the video mirroring issue, and have discovered that I could use ScreenSpanningDoctor to overcome it. But unless I get a monitor that works, I'm being premature to worry about that at this point.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Mac OS X (10.3.9)

LCD screens have a "native" resolution. This is the resolution they're designed to run at. While you can usually lower the resolution of an LCD screen from its native resolution, the results will not be very good. You can see this if you change the resolution of your iBook's LCD screen to 800 x 600 for a little while. The display in your link has a native resolution of 1280 x 1024. So, it may be capable of stepping down to 1024 x 768, but the result may be a fuzzy image. Without the Screen Spanning Doctor, this display might not be a very good choice.
CRT screens are much more capable of changing resolutions. A 17" CRT screen might be a better choice whether you decide to use the SSD or not.
Someone else may have to comment on that screen's performance, though.
-Doug

Extern monitor only when connected?

hi, i have a big problem, i have a macbook pro 3,1 running arch with nvidia driver, and i have an extern monitior, which i want to use, if plugged in on dvi.
i want to use the extern monitor only, no macbook screen, i know i can enable the monitor with nvidia-settings, but when i shutdown, disconnect the monitor, and for example have a journey with the train, then my macbook cannot be used, because the configured screen is the extern monitor, and the macbook screen is black. no hotplugging here
if theres no clean solution for this problem, maybe there is a cmd to switch to external monitor only, which i can enter manually every time i need the extern screen, and after reboot it switches back to macbook screen?
i hope someone can help me....
regards chief

You can try something like this in your .xinitrc
xrandr | grep DVI | grep " connected "
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
xrandr --output LVDS1 --off
xrandr --output DVI --auto
fi

My external monitor worked with my MacBook Pro before I took it on a little trip, now it won't work. Any suggestions?

My external monitor worked with my MacBook Pro before I took it on a little trip, now it won't work. Any suggestions?

Never mind. Sorry. It fixed itself.

Is every external monitor compatible with mac via a thunderbolt to vga cable

Is every external monitor compatible with macbook air via thunderbolt to vga??????/

Yes if the monitor has a VGA D-Sub input port.
Otherwise you'll need a TB to Whatever The Input of The Monitor Is adapter. Could be DVI or HDMI.

Strange issue with external monitor, only working when external speakers plugged in (using Thunderbolt to VGA adaptor)

Hey – I am having a very strange issue with my external monitor; where it only works if my external speakers are plugged in and connected.
I am using a late 2011 Macbook pro, running Mavericks 10.9.4, along with an MBox 2 (USB Audio Interface), and two powered speakers (KRK Rokit 5). This setup has had no issues. I have just acquired an external monitor (Benq T2200HD), which I am using with a thunderbolt to VGA adaptor (a cheap Chinese knockoff adaptor).
To start - I plugged the monitor in with the thunderbolt adaptor, and it powers up and works fine. However, there is a nasty buzz coming from the speakers. I did some research and it looks like a simple ground loop issue. I did a bit of troubleshooting, and this is where things get weird.
What I found is - If I unplug the MBox, the monitor loses signal from the computer (displaying ‘No Signal Detected!’). Further, if I keep the MBox plugged in, however unplug both the cables from the MBox to the speakers, the monitor loses signal. It doesn’t matter if the speakers are turned off, however they need to be plugged in (or the monitor loses signal). Weirder still, I can unplug the MBox, however the monitor will work if I plug in the speakers through my macs headphone jack.
Simply put, the monitor only works if there is a direct connection between the computer, the speakers, and the power source. What is going on here? Is the monitor grounding through the computer port, to the speakers (I don’t know how this works, is this possible?). Could it somehow be the cheap VGA adaptor I am using?
Some other information:
- Everything is plugged into the same multi-box for power. I have tried plugging things into separate sources, and the result is the same.
- If I unplug the thunderbolt adaptor, then the speaker noise disappears straight away.
- The ground noise doesn’t appear in my headphones, which are plugged into the MBox.
Any information would be great – am I missing something here, or is this genuinely weird?

Well, I went back into Best Buy to test on 3 other laptops (2 Asus, and their floor model for this Sony). It seems to be doing the same problem so at least I was able to rule out broken hardware issue on my particular laptop.
Here's what I did to test:
Since I couldn't really install Adobe Premiere on their machines, I used the DVIO software (http://www.carr-engineering.com/dvio.htm) and a 5 min clip I captured. I transferred onto their machines, hooked up my Sony D8, and attempted to play the video. It would play for 15 seconds and then stop and jitter with a loud noise (like it does on my laptop). I even tried changing each machine's firewire driver to the legacy one and same results. I pulled a brand new 4 pin to 4 pin firewire cable off their shelf and still the same problem.
I think I've nailed it down to Win7x64 bit Home Edition not playing nice with Firewire driver. Very annoying. I can't find any concrete evidence of this from other users on any of the forums that have my particular problem, but from my own testing, it's all I can conclude.
I have 2 other things I can try:
1. Opening the laptop and looking at the firewire to maybe find appropriate driver (ugh, I don't want to have to open this thing up).
2. Upgrading to Win7x64bit Pro and possibly testing with XP on the new MS Virtual PC (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/). I can't do it with my Home edition apparantly.
Who needs to view video on an external TV anyways....sheeesh...(scarcasm).
Tim

Strange issue with external monitor, only working when external speakers plugged in

Hey – I am having a very strange issue with my external monitor; where it only works if my external speakers are plugged in and connected.
I am using a late 2011 Macbook pro, running Mavericks 10.9.4, along with an MBox 2 (USB Audio Interface), and two powered speakers (KRK Rokit 5). This setup has had no issues. I have just acquired an external monitor (Benq T2200HD), which I am using with a thunderbolt to VGA adaptor (a cheap non-apple adaptor).
To start - I plugged the monitor in with the thunderbolt adaptor, and it powers up and works fine. However, there is a nasty buzz coming from the speakers. I did some research and it looks like a simple ground loop issue. I did a bit of troubleshooting, and this is where things get weird.
What I found is - If I unplug the MBox, the monitor loses signal from the computer (displaying ‘No Signal Detected!’). Further, if I keep the MBox plugged in, however unplug both the cables from the MBox to the speakers, the monitor loses signal. It doesn’t matter if the speakers are turned off, however they need to be plugged in (or the monitor loses signal). Weirder still, I can unplug the MBox, however the monitor will work if I plug in the speakers through my macs headphone jack.
Simply put, the monitor only works if there is a direct connection between the computer, the speakers, and the power source. What is going on here? Is the monitor grounding through the computer port, to the speakers (I don’t know how this works, is this possible?). Could it somehow be the cheap VGA adaptor I am using?
Some other information:
- Everything is plugged into the same multi-box for power. I have tried plugging things into separate sources, and the result is the same.
- If I unplug the thunderbolt adaptor, then the speaker noise disappears straight away.
- The ground noise doesn’t appear in my headphones, which are plugged into the MBox.
Any information would be great – am I missing something here, or is this genuinely weird?

Hello cgoldberg11
Please go to the below link to test if you are having a speaker hardware failure.
Testing for Hardware Failures (Windows 7)
This will rule out hardware failure, let me know how that goes.
Thanks
If I have solved your issue, please feel free to provide kudos and make sure you mark this thread as solution provided!
Although I work for HP, my posts and replies are my own opinion and not those of HP. .....
Reguards,
Mo

Thinkpad T60p with Win XP - Lost color on external monitor (only black & white)

Hi, I have a ThinkPad T60P, and a couple of weeks ago, I lost color on my external monitor (connected by VGA cable)
I have done a lot of testing, and found a couple of strange things around this:
* when using docking station with two monitors, only monitor nr "1" inCatalyst Control Center shows colors, but not "2".
* When using external monitor (or projector) I don't get color
* When showing video on the external monitor, color works(!) This is only on some type of videos, I think. Flash videos (ie. YouTube does not show colors)
* When getting a bluescreen, the external monitor displays bluescreen with colors. When rebooting after bluescreen, colors were working while booting (windows logo with colors), but as soon as XP was up, colors were gone(!)
* I have tried updating to the latest graphics driver (79d533ww.exe), and all the settings in Catalyst Control Center / Control Panel
As a result of these findings, I beleive it must be a software problem, but since upgrading the drivers didn't work, I don't know what to try next.
I see also that there are other people experiencing the same problems, but I can't find any solution to this problem.
Re:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3597258
Hope someone can help me here!
Best regards,
pmlovold

Cats seem to have a strong affinity for that display mode — remarkably often we hear that they've typed in the correct keystroke combo for it, and yet they never seem to set it back to normal after using the computer. Not very considerate, but you know cats: consideration isn't part of the package.

GT70 2QD system crash with FANS running at 100% on external monitor only

So I have a GT70 2QD with 4710MQ and 970M graphics. I've swapped out the hard drives and gone with 2 SSD's and added another 16GB of RAM. I'm quite experienced with system building, so no concerns there. My problem only occurs when I have the computer attached to an external monitor. The fans will get up to max without using the button to enable the cooling boost and the only way to shut it down is to put the system to sleep. Temperatures are never an issue, especially once the fans get going. The system will occasionally slow down and lag and has from time to time just crashed and rebooted. I have none of these issues while using the laptops own monitor, gaming or not. It is strictly related to being attached to an external monitor. Any thoughts, suggestions or previous experience with this problem would be appreciated.
Thanks

Quote from: medic10167 on 28-May-15, 22:08:21
Thanks for asking...I've done a bunch of research, and from what I can see on the forums this isn't an isolated incident. Sadly it seems that ppl that have sent their laptops in for RMA get them back and still end up having the same problem. It very well could be a motherboard issue, but is that's the case, IMO it sounds like a faulty temperature sensor. The only fix for that would be a new motherboard. The cost of doing RMA business with MSI in the past has been atrocious (over $100 for a video card) so I'm afraid to ask what it would cost to send my laptop to them. All they really need to do is a firmware update that identifies the faulty sensor and changes its operation parameters.
Firmware update has its limits. Maybe this is something cannot be fixed by firmware.

Can iMac G5 be used as an external monitor for an iBook G4

Is it possible to connect an iBook G4 to an iMac G5 so as to use the G5 as an external monitor? (Not spanning necessarily, just using it as a monitor.)

Yes, if you are willing to live with the limited dimension of the iBook G4. You can use a VNC client, such as Chicken of the VNC, on the iMac G5, and after configuring remote administration on your G4, and hooking the two up with an ethernet cable (or IP over firewire) you can connect and get the screen echoed to your G5. It will only be at the max resolution of your G4 (1024x768) though.

2010 Macbook Pro 17 display on external monitor only after power on

THis has happened a few times over the past 6 weeks - I power on first thing in the morning and the primary screen is black, and the login screen appears on the external monitor. Shutting it down and starting up again does the same thing. When it happened before I'd power off, remove the external display, power on and then I'd get the primary display back agin but it's not working this time and I've only got the external display working.
Is there a utility to 'kick' the graphics into the correct mode, or is this some type of hardware problem?
Thanks,
Graham

The primary laptop monitor starts blank, and only the external monitor is working.
If I shutdown, unplug the external monitor and power back on the laptop screen stays blank. If I plug the external monitor in the screen that would normally have been on the primary laptop screen is on the external monitor, and the laptop screen remains blank. At this point I can only work with an external monitor plugged in, and that limits my portability a bit

Using Expose on external monitor only?

Hello All,
I have 2011 mbp that i sometimes use with an external monitor, with the monitor being my only display (closed clam-shell mode). I encountered a problem where the hot corners do not work? for some reason only the upper left corner works on the external display. if i use hot corners on my laptop screen, all the corners work? (I am not sure if this is relevant to solving this issue, but I use a wireless mouse when i use my external display.)
How do i fix this so that all the corners work as hot corners in expose on my external monitor?
Thank-you,
krm1897

We went through a similar discussion with the placement of the Dock with multiple displays, and found by experiment that the dock is placed on the specified edge of the main display (bottom, left, right), unless that edge was extended by an adjacent display along that edge, in which case the Dock was placed on the edge of the Extended Desktop.
I think Capt Fred is saying something similar for this as well.

Is there a way to connect and view an external monitor only on my Intel iMac?

I have an Acer 15.6" monitor connected to my Intel iMac via VGA cable and Mini-DVI to VGA adapter. I am running Lion (V10 7.3) and would like to direct my image to the external display only. The preferences pane does not offer that option. Is there some way to do it?

Do you have a desktop machine running iTunes?
If so then yes, setup home sharing and you can stream anything in your iTunes library to your iPad.
It works good.

External monitor only with iBook

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