Apple Cinema Display on Fedora Core 1?

Will Clifton wgcabp at cox.net
Wed Mar 10 04:17:32 UTC 2004


On Tue, 2004-03-09 at 19:01, Christopher Bottaro wrote:
> hello,
> a month or so ago, our IT dept bought a bunch of new Apple Cinema 
> Displays for our office.  we all use linux/unix machines here, and 
> after about a week of not getting the displays to work with Redhat 9, 
> they gave up and decided to get Power Macs to use with the displays.
> 
> well, it took a month for me to realize that i like linux much better 
> than os x (gimmie back my kde and gnu stuff, damnit! ;) and now i want 
> a linux machine again.  the problem is that i just can't part with this 
> beautiful monitor!  granted the IT guys failed, but i'm >sure< there is 
> a way to get this monitor to work with fedora core 1...anyone have any 
> success?
> 
> correct me if my terminology is wrong or whatever.  but its a DV 
> monitor and only accepts DV input.  so to use with a standard SVGA 
> graphics card, i need some kinda converter cable or a video card with 
> DV output.  can anyone suggest a good, cheap video card to do this?  or 
> should i not bother and go with the converting cable?
> 
> the problem the IT guys had was with the xserver (of course).  the 
> display worked fine until the xserver started, then it just displayed a 
> bunch of noise.

Terminology almost correct. The display uses Apple's proprietary ADC
connector. To go directly from ADC to VGA (as long as your Apple Cinema
is not the 17") this is the product you want:

http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=1301

but it is NOT cheap (@$300). Going from ADC to VGA is not easy, or at
least Apple hasn't made it easy. A cheaper solution is to use a DVI
video board in your linux box (preferably a Radeon, which is what ships
with Macs) and go with an ADC -> DVI adapter for your Apple Cinema. An
example of such an animal is here:

http://www.sharbor.com/products/BOTN9100002.html

If you went with that solution you'd end up spending about half the
price of going from ADC -> VGA. Mind you, I *personally* have not done
this, but I'm fresh on the topic because I have a friend that has this
adapter working with an Apple Cinema 22" on a home-made wintel box
running XP with a Radeon 8500. Second hand information I realize, but
hope that helps.

Will Clifton







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