[elpep]

Mine doesn't show the mirroring option under the display icon in the top right, already tried DellEFI 1.07 mirror friendly kext install but no luck.
Any more ideas?

[hozman911]

You will find the the mirroring checkbox in the Displays panel in System Preferences. When you hook up your projector, an Arrangement panel is added to the Displays window. There is where you will find the Mirroring checkbox. Good luck and let me know how it works out for you.

[SteveJ]

I am having a similar problem. I can plug in any monitor to the VGA port and it works fine. (Mirroring off) Works every time, I can even reboot with a monitor plugged in and all seems to work fine.

But when I plug in a projector I have problems. Usually my Mini9 just locks, no mouse, no keyboard, nothing. Occasionally I get vertical bars on both projector and internal screen, Unplugging projector causes screen to go back to normal, so it is a projector induced effect. These are not the same bars that I get if I turn on mirroring MirrorDisplays has no effect.

I have tried using the mirror friendly kext with same result (but I am not actually trying to mirror, I want to extend onto the external screen) Objective is to use Keynote or Powerpoint in presenter mode.

Very frustrating - this practically is the only thing my Dell Mini 9 'Mac Nano' can't do.

I see many posts about projectors causing lockup, but to date have seen no fix? Any ideas?

Steve

[SkyWriter]

i had the same problem you describe. i used MirrorDisplays2 application (several times in a row). it always works now - without the application!

[Bubsdaddy]

Having read a number of threads in the myminidell.com forums, I'm trying to figure out if I have an accurate understanding regarding the capabilities of the VGA port on the Mini 10 (running OS X 10.5.7) are concerned.

Is it accurate to say that at this moment in time, there are solutions for connecting an external display and using to extend the desktop, but no solutions yet that allow mirroring the Mini's display on an external monitor?

The collective knowledge of this group is amazing and helped me figure out how to make my previously unusable VGA port usable. Following others suggestion to install the old GMA kext from Dell EFI, I can now at least use an external monitor as an extension of my Mini's desktop. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a way to mirror the desktop to an external monitor.

I'm hoping to use my Dell Mini 10 with a projector when I teach and I don't think I'll try unless mirroring works. If anyone knows how to mirror, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

Thanks to everyone for this incredible resource.

[midwinter]

Could someone provide a screenshot of what options should be selected in the DellEFI installer if I already have a working install of OSX and don't want to mess it up?

[midwinter]

To get mirroring working on a working installation on a mini 9, do this:

1) Run DellEFI 1.2a5
2) Select the following:



3) Click "install" and then reboot.
4) Plug in the external monitor, go to system preferences, and select "displays"
5) Select "arrangement" and then check the "mirroring" box.

[Jeepbro94]

Thanks to all of you for this. was driving me nuts.

peace

[jetkins]

Just be aware that that older kext has been known to cause other problems such as screen artifacts. It's because of those issues that it has been replaced by a newer version by default.

[pbeyersdorf]

I had the same problem where a second monitor plugged into the VGA port worked fine, but when I tried a projector I got static. Eventually I figured it out. Mac OS X seems to remember the settings for a particular monitor, so if you plug in one monitor it may default to mirroring at 1024x768 while a different monitor might default to extend display at 1600x1200 (I don't know how it know which monitor is which, this is just empirical observation - perhaps someone can explain). So while extended desktop worked fine on the external monitor when I plugged in a projector it was trying to do mirroring. My solution was to write an applescript to toggle mirroring on/off, and set it to be triggered by a keypress using Butler. Then when I plug in a new projector and I get static I can use this key combination to switch to extended display and restore the video signal. After doing this once it has always defaulted to extended display and I haven't had to do it again.

Here is the applescript. It uses GUI scripting, so make sure "Access for assisted devices" is selected in the universal access preference pane:

tell application "System Preferences"
activate
end tell

tell application "System Events"
tell application process "System Preferences"
set frontmost to true
click menu item "Displays" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
click radio button "Arrangement" of tab group 1 of window 1 -- can put title of window in quotes instead of "1"
click checkbox "Mirror Displays" of group 1 of tab group 1 of window 1

end tell
end tell