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Question

Lag using screen sharing with headless machines on 10.8 and 10.9...

  • February 21, 2014
  • 4 replies
  • 23 views

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So I encountered this issue, and found a solution and thought I'd share,

Problem: Very slow screen sharing when connecting to 10.8 or 10.9 machines without monitors. IE MacMini/Mac Pros.

Solution: Fake out the graphic card to think there is a display attached and issue resolved.

To accomplish this just grab three 100 Ohm resistors and a mini display port to vga adapter. Using the attached diagram connect the resistors to pins 1-6, 2-7, 3-8 and plug the adapter into the headless machine. external image link

Now when you remote in the lag is gone and all you have left to do is set the screen size to a workable resolution.
Hope this helps someone who was as annoyed as I was. (PS sounds like this is fixed it 10.9.2 though lol).

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

4 replies

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  • Contributor
  • February 22, 2014

In the past I've set these adaptors up only connecting 1 to 6, similar to the red line in your diagram, without any issue. Might be a little easier to squeeze one resistor on there than three adjacent without shorting them out on each other.

http://blog.macminicolo.net/post/33839671756/build-a-dummy-dongle-for-a-headless-mac-mini


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  • Author
  • Esteemed Contributor
  • February 22, 2014

In my tests I tried just pins 1-6 but it stopped my ability to remote to the machine at all. It only worked properly after trying the suggestion of bridging the 3 pins.


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  • New Contributor
  • August 12, 2014

Just get a dummy adapter. WAAY easier than making one as I've found.

http://blog.macsales.com/25997-headless-mac-video-accelerator-new-solution-to-old-problem


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  • Contributor
  • December 1, 2014

Another dummy adapter that does the trick is the fit-headless HDMI-connector:
http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/fit-headless/