Mac Mini Video Connection Woes

[Kevin]

Just bought two new Mac Mini servers to replace aging XServe hardware. A couple of observations.

Connecting to Data Center power:
The Minis have two-prong power cords–no ground. All UPS devices in our data center are 240v. I hate to have a computer with a metal housing device plugged into 240v with no case ground… Found adapters, gritted teeth and plugged them in anyway.

Connecting to the console:
The Minis have mini display port and HDMI ports. No real path from HDMI to VGA to connect to the console, so mini display port to VGA adapters it is. Oops, I have to connect Promise Thunderbolt RAID arrays to the Minis. That uses the shared Thunderbolt/ MiniDisplay port. So do I have a choice–console or RAID connection? I hate to have to buy expensive digital to analog video converter just to get video to the console.

Are any of you guys faced with the same issue trying to connect a display console and external storage via Thunderbolt? How are you handling it?

[jarednichols · Accepted solution]

Hello, USB display card with VGA on the end of it?

[Josh_S]

I'm not sure how I'd feel about having an ungrounded 240v either. I suppose you could rig something up with a grounded mesh shield, but it does seem awful hackish.

Thunderbolt is designed to be daisy chained. Your RAID should have two Thunderbolt ports on the back, use one for the Mac Mini and attach a Mini DisplayPort to VGA adaptor on the other. I'm not 100% sure this will work due to the analog requirements, but I am doing this with Mini DisplayPort to DVI with no issues.

[Kevin]

Thanks Josh,
Yeah, that was the first thing I tried (with VGA, not DVI) and it didn't work. None of our console systems can handle DVI at this point.

[rtrouton]

It's a little pricy, but try using the Kanex HDMI to VGA adapter for Apple TV to connect the Mini with your console. We've had good results with the Kanex adapter connecting HDMI ports on PCs and Macs to VGA projectors.

[jarednichols · Accepted solution]

Hello, USB display card with VGA on the end of it?

[Kevin · Accepted solution]

Thanks Jared, that seems like a promising solution.

EDIT

But it didn't work. Seems that a USB-> VGA adapter can be a secondary source of video, but probably cannot be the ONLY source of video.

However, one of our data center guys plugged in the MiniDisplay port to VGA adapter that DID NOT work yesterday and immediately it popped video up on the console screen. At first I thought it may be because of the USB->VGA adapter we had plugged in, but we took that off and it still worked. We restarted, it still worked. This absolutely did not work yesterday and is working perfectly today.

So, a MiniDisplay port to VGA adapter plugged into the back of the Promise Pegasus storage array is giving me perfect video for the console. This makes sense as it is a bus and should work. That is why we tried that first, yesterday. NO idea why it didn't work yesterday, but I am glad it is working.

[rcorbin]

We had some issues getting it to work with our ATEN KVM consoles. Turned out there were some firmware updates for the ATENs that once applied solved the issue. So we are using the MiniDisplay Port to VGA adapters now and it's working fine. The odd thing you will find is that there is sometimes a strange delay for it to sync. At first the delay caused me to think it wasn't working. But after sitting there for a bit it syncs up. This time can very. I wonder if this was the issue you were having when you said it wasn't working the day before.

[technicholas]

I agree 100% with the grounding issue. I guess this is a apple flaw.

[pickerin]

The Mac minis ship with an HDMI -> DVI adapter. Slap a DVI -> VGA converter on the end and you can use the Thunderbolt for the RAID.

[Kevin]

RE:"The Mac minis ship with an HDMI -> DVI adapter. Slap a DVI -> VGA converter on the end and you can use the Thunderbolt for the RAID."

Actually, that won't work. The signal is digital. SImply adapting the cable won't convert it. If you notice, all of the DVI->VGA adapters have 4 extra pins that even prevent you from plugging it in to the HDMI-> DVI adapter.

[Kevin]

RE:"The odd thing you will find is that there is sometimes a strange delay for it to sync. At first the delay caused me to think it wasn't working. But after sitting there for a bit it syncs up. This time can very. I wonder if this was the issue you were having when you said it wasn't working the day before."

That may have been the issue. When it didn't work, we disconnected it fairly quickly.

[pickerin]

Good point, I didn't think that through. I recently experienced the issue of not having enough Thunderbolt ports, and then realized I didn't have to use it for my DVI adapter, the HDMI worked fine.

1+1 != 3