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hardware is hard :-(
I got a new monitor to use with my Mac Mini, after confirming that the product spec says all the right things about connections (and a couple other things I care about). Tonight I tried to connect it. Easy, right? You've got a bunch of cables that each fit in one place, and hieroglyphics that come with the monitor besides. (Actual words, not so much -- presumably because of internationalization concerns.)
It came with an HDMI cable and a display port cable that fits the Thunderbolt connector on the other end. (Q&A confirms that's what you're supposed to do with it.) I assume I'm supposed to choose one. I tried each on its own and then tried them together; in all cases I got "no cable detected" on the monitor even though all connections are tight. I tried the HDMI connection with Dani's laptop; same result. I was using the HDMI connection on my old monitor. (Not HDMI on the monitor's end; there's some sort of adapter. But HDMI on the Mac end.)
It seems unlikely that both cables are bad, though I'll try to borrow other cables from work tomorrow to swap those out. Could something be broken in the monitor such that it would power up and produce its splash screen but then not detect either connector? I am really not a hardware person... What should I do next to try to get a working monitor?
It has USB ports and the diagram shows plugging a keyboard into one. I guess that only works if I can connect USB to USB on the computer? The package didn't include a USB cable. Or is HDMI some sort of magic that transmits other signal too? (It did include a cable I can't identify that doesn't fit into any connections on my Mac.)
Assuming I get that far, if I get a choice between HDMI and DisplayPort/Thunderbolt, which do I want? Ideally I'd like to send sound to the monitor too (it claims to support that) and get rid of the crappy falling-apart external speakers I have now.
Argh. This is the part about computers I hate -- getting the pieces of hardware to all play nicely. I wish I could get someone to come by tomorrow night and make it all happy. :-(
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I was only expecting video with this monitor but the pictograms show a connection for speakers. I haven't groped around in there yet to try to find a line out. I wouldn't want a line out; if sound can reach my monitor at all I want it to stay there. If not, I'll keep using the old speakers plugged directly into the computer until I improve that. (If I need real sound quality I use my USB headphones; the speakers are for the various dings and beeps and other notification sounds and the like. Really don't care much about quality there...)
One of the cables in the box is conventional (i.e. full-size) USB at one and and a sort of small square plug at the other. I was looking for something with conventional USB at both ends, but in looking around in the cable bins at work, I'm finding more of what I got and none of what I was looking for. Is that a USB connection too and I should be looking for a place on the monitor to plug in that square end? I'm pretty sure there's nothing on my Mac that takes that connection.
I guess some of the problems that arise for me from stuff like this is that I usually can't actually *see* connections and buttons and pins and whatnot and have to do things largely by feel. It just now occurred to me that I could use my cell phone to take a picture of that part of the monitor, which I could zoom. So I'll do that when I get home.
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- the manual says it has a line-in, not a line-out.
- Glasses correct my vision to 20/20 and I still use the phone camera technique to look at various inaccessible, small, or badly-lit locations. Motherboards are often all three. Flash and zoom win.
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