DVI cable problem?

10 Dec 2013 22:08:44

Eric Jervis

I've had some very strange behaviour tonight from my two Macs. They share a monitor as I've no room to put a second one. I used the G5 to write a letter in inDesign, exported it to a PDF, copied it to a DVD, opened the DVD just to check that it was there, (I was suspicious because I saw no sign of the copying process which was instantaneous), ejected it, shut down the G5, switched off the monitor and unplugged it, fired up the MacPro (Mavericks), plugged in the monitor and waited for it all to happen. It didn't. I tried to shut down the Pro with the power button but nothing would happen. After a small Scotch I realised it must be the DVI cable gone down, swapped them over and all was well. I had a new one which I plugged in to the G5. The DVD I'd just burned on the G5 was blank. No sign of the PDF I'd just opened on the other machine. OK I thought, it must have been a duff disk, I'll repeat the exercise but with a CD this time. Exactly the same thing happened; I copied the PDF to the CD, opened it up from the CD, and it looked good. Shut down the G5, unplugged the DVI cable, plugged in the new DVI cable to the Pro, fired up the Pro, and was once more faced with a dead monitor connection. So I used my last monitor cable.
The G5 has been playing up recently but I can live with that, emailing the PDFs to myself and retrieving them on the Pro.
BUT: and its a big but, how on earth do you shut down a machine running Mavericks without a monitor, when the power button misbehaves?
AND: is the G5 blowing up my monitor cables when I shut it down? I'm afraid to go near the thing now!

Re: DVI cable problem?

15 Dec 2013 08:56:57

Eric Jervis

Yes, I couldn't quite believe it either, as it defied all logic, perhaps I was tired? I've just plugged the 'duff' DVI cable into the monitor and the G5, and I'm using it now. Something strange has happened though; when I click on one of the discussions only the odd sentence can be read, the rest of the text is just a series of dots, as if a slug of type has fallen over and I'm just seeing the tips of the characters.