[soho100]

Do I simply connect the monitor to the 10v and press F1 to switch to it? Is switching back as easy as pressing F1 again? And one final question...will the monitor display a higher resolution than the 10v display or will it simply be small res on a bigger screen. Thanks.

[ustal]

I plugged in an exnternal monitor, OSX detected it and both screens came up with distorted video (vertical horizontal lines), everything came back to normal after I un-plugged the external one.
Any ideas?
Thanks.

[tchariya]

The external monitor thing is tricky. I've hooked up 3 different external monitors to my 10v and all started out with wierdness.

I don't mirror, I extend the desktop.
I also drag the Dock over to the bigger display and make it my primary.
I also had to do manual things, like book up with monitor plugged in; turn monitor off and on to be recognized; go into display settings to make sure the right monitor was recognized; set the external monitor to the right display size.

I found that since the 10v is a widescreen, the best displays to air with the 10v is another large format widescreen.

Once the 10v knows about your external, it never forgets...even when switching from different ones.

[covati]

I have hooked a few displays up to my mini and haven't had any major problems. The biggest issue I've had is the occasional instance of the mini confusing two of them and not getting the aspect right (confusing my 20.1" dell 4:3 with my 23" HP 1080P display).

I know I did have some weird issues after first setting it up. I found that a reboot sometimes actually helped. I'd try that first. You can also try booting with it hooked up, that can help on initial identification for the mini.

Don't hit the F1 key, that is destined to cause the mini's video drivers to fail. OS X is designed to automatically detect and account for external monitors, if you are having problems, pop up the system preferences and play around.

BUT BE CAREFUL. I have had two instances with with os x where I have picked bad settings and had a hell of a time switching them back. This is because not all settings cause os x to do the whole "Does this look good? click ok to confirm". So if you pick a refresh rate that isn't supported and causes your LCD to go black you'll have a hell of a time fixing it. OS X will remember that setting and go back to it everytime you reboot. I've managed to click around on the screen and restore settings, but it's not always easy.

tl;dr? OS X will pick the best setting for you when you plug in the new monitor, it might just take 30 seconds to come into view. Playing with it a bit usually doesn't really help all that much and can just cause headaches.

[saracli]

My 10v works great with a wide aspect ratio Samsung as extended desktop with 1440x900 resolution. Mirroring is no go. Also, I hit F1 accidentally a couple of times and haven't figured out how to get out of the frozen startup image, apart from plugging in a VGA cable. Anyone have any ideas how to correct the display after accidentally hitting F1?

[soho100]

Originally Posted by saracli

Anyone have any ideas how to correct the display after accidentally hitting F1?

Without an external connected simply shut the lid and wait a few secs, open lid and it should work, if not hit the power button. Don't know what happens if you have an external monitor attached but it certainly works without one.

When I connect my monitor (a cheap DGM) to the 10v I get a garbled display on both the 10v and the DGM. From experience I'm thinking the DGM display must have been set in it's previous use at a res/Hrz not supported on the 10v, this was a common problem on old G4's when swapping around monitors. and was usually sorted out by hooking the external to another PC/Mac and adjusting the display back to 640x480 then reconnecting it. I'm hoping this works for me but can't test it yet as a don't have a spare PC/Mac with VGA port.

Can someone please recommend a display that worked first time so if I can't fix the issue I can at least go out and buy one I know works.

Thanks

[Nezil]

In my experience, and my understanding from reading these forums...

- Mirroring doesn't work, and will cause both displays to be garbled vertical lines.

- Extending your desktop works fine, and in most cases auto detects.

The problem is... if your Mini first sets itself up to mirror, how can you change it? There is a terminal command, and Meklort kindly included it in the latest NBI 0.8.3. It's in the /Extra/bin folder, called mirroring.

The syntax if I remember correctly is simply: mirroring off

If you run this command without an external monitor attached, it might not make any difference; it didn't for me. What you can do is open Terminal, type the command in, but don't hit Enter, then plug in your monitor, and hit enter after it's detected and showing the garbled vertical lines. All should be good then (until you foolishly click mirror in system preferences).

[delphinus87]

I use an App called MirrorDisplays. All it does it toggle between Mirrored and Extended view modes. It sits in my Applications folder and whenever I get garbled Video, I just Cmd-Space for spotlight and type in "mirr" and hit Enter. You can probably create a script or keyboard shortcut for this, but this way works for me

[covati]

Yes! that's it, mine defaulted to mirrored the first time as well. To fix it I had to turn on the display prefs menu bar option (so I knew it would be at the top about 3 inches in on the mini and managed to 'find' it by clicking around (I actually had to attach/detach my external cable about 8 times to find it). Eventually I got the menu and selected the right option to extend the desktop.

@delphinus87, that's a great idea, I have used QuickSilver a number of times to save the day when I couldn't see what was going on.

[ukbodypilot]

Originally Posted by delphinus87

I use an App called MirrorDisplays. All it does it toggle between Mirrored and Extended view modes. It sits in my Applications folder and whenever I get garbled Video, I just Cmd-Space for spotlight and type in "mirr" and hit Enter. You can probably create a script or keyboard shortcut for this, but this way works for me

This app solved my problem also. Just position the mouse cursor over the app icon then plugin the external monitor, wait for the garbaled screen and then double click on the mouse.