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Neurophonic
May 2, 2009

movax posted:

I believe that external displays are always driven by the discrete GPU, so in your case that'd be the AMD GPU in your MBP. Is the MBP setup properly in display options to extend desktop, output 1920x1080/60Hz?

The 13" MBP 2011 doesn't have a discrete GPU.
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs-13inch.html

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sicjoke
Nov 14, 2005
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
^^^ What he/she said. (The 13" 2011 MBP has a single Intel video card)

As far as being set up correctly, there is little that I can do in the way of setting up other than selecting if the display is extending or mirroring the desktop and what resolution I want.

External Display Settings:


LCD Display Settings:


On my new MBP those settings produces a picture that is ~10% smaller horizontally than the monitor is capable of displaying. lovely iPhone Pic of External Display:


I have also replicated this issue on another 2011 MBP / External Monitor setup. The Apple support forums also have a number of people moaning about the same issue.

Apple support have gone away to have a think and said they will get back to me in 2 days. I am not confident that the results are going to be favourable.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

Neurophonic posted:

The 13" MBP 2011 doesn't have a discrete GPU.
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs-13inch.html

Oops, I'm dumb, sorry :downs:

At least it's not just you having the problem, hopefully Apple comes up with a fix for you! (guessing it's a video driver issue)

evensevenone
May 12, 2001
Glass is a solid.
Can you use DVI instead of VGA?

flyboi
Oct 13, 2005

agg stop posting
College Slice

sicjoke posted:

^^^ What he/she said. (The 13" 2011 MBP has a single Intel video card)

As far as being set up correctly, there is little that I can do in the way of setting up other than selecting if the display is extending or mirroring the desktop and what resolution I want.

External Display Settings:


LCD Display Settings:


On my new MBP those settings produces a picture that is ~10% smaller horizontally than the monitor is capable of displaying. lovely iPhone Pic of External Display:


I have also replicated this issue on another 2011 MBP / External Monitor setup. The Apple support forums also have a number of people moaning about the same issue.

Apple support have gone away to have a think and said they will get back to me in 2 days. I am not confident that the results are going to be favourable.

On the mac uncheck Overscan and then go into your tv settings. There should be something in your picture settings along the line of "HD Mode." I have to have mine on mode 2 to have correct overscan which got rid of the border but doesn't scale past the border of my tv.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

evensevenone posted:

Can you use DVI instead of VGA?

Try this, VGA does weird stuff.

sicjoke
Nov 14, 2005
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.

flyboi posted:

On the mac uncheck Overscan and then go into your tv settings. There should be something in your picture settings along the line of "HD Mode." I have to have mine on mode 2 to have correct overscan which got rid of the border but doesn't scale past the border of my tv.

This was the first thing suggested by Apple support. However, Overscan is not an available when connect to an external display using the mini display port adaptor and a VGA D-sub cable. I believe the settings you mention are only available when connected using HDMI (I am using D-Sub).

evensevenone posted:

Can you use DVI instead of VGA?

Bob Morales posted:

Try this, VGA does weird stuff.

I agree, DVI might give me a better (and fuller) picture but don't have the correct adapter. Yet another loving £25 in accessories to Apple then!

My frustration is born out of the fact that my old MacBook happily works whilst the new MacBook Pro doesn't! So much for progress.

Binary Badger
Oct 11, 2005

Trolling Link for a decade


Couple of people reported on xlr8yourmac.com that it's possible to upgrade your older card to an Airdrop compatible card by getting the 'new' card on eBay and installing it.

xlr8yourmac.com posted:

The cards that support AirDrop by default:
Broadcom BCM94322MC, BCM94322HM8L
Atheros AR5BXB112, AR5BXB92, AR5BHB92, AR5B93
(And sounds like Atheros AR5B95 would work if AirPortAtheros40.kext edited to add DevID = 0x002b. Ditto for AR5BXB72 if edited for DevID = 0x0024.)

Cards that do not support AirDrop:
Broadcom BCM94321MC, BCM94312MCG, BCM94312MCAG, BCM94311MCG

Some people over there have already reported success with the PCIe mini cards.

movax
Aug 30, 2008

Binary Badger posted:

Couple of people reported on xlr8yourmac.com that it's possible to upgrade your older card to an Airdrop compatible card by getting the 'new' card on eBay and installing it.


Some people over there have already reported success with the PCIe mini cards.

Woo, so that does work. :smugdog:

sicjoke: do you have something like Monoprice (the vendor of all the adapters in the OP) over in the EU? Would be cheaper than the Apple "official" adapters.

flyboi
Oct 13, 2005

agg stop posting
College Slice

sicjoke posted:

This was the first thing suggested by Apple support. However, Overscan is not an available when connect to an external display using the mini display port adaptor and a VGA D-sub cable. I believe the settings you mention are only available when connected using HDMI (I am using D-Sub).

I know it works on DVI cables because I use it on my 2009 Mini. I'm sure there's some reasoning behind VGA not having overscan controls because I think Windows has a similar problem. Been a loooong time since I tried using VGA but IIRC it was a PITA for me as well.

krnhotwings
May 7, 2009
Grimey Drawer
I've got a Macbook Pro 5,1 (late 2008,) first unibody model with a Broadcom BCM43xx wireless card. Does anybody know if I can swap this out for any of the recent MBPs' wireless cards?

e: Nevermind, it seems that all of the unibodies use BCM4322. In this case, I'll explain my problem.. My MBP decides that it can't connect to certain routers/access points/etc. I can't seem to find a pattern, but it just simply cannot connect to some and can connect to others. It's really just a crapshoot whether it can or cannot connect to a wifi spot that I've never used before. Could it be that somehow the card is just crappy and I could just get it replaced? I would think otherwise since I have no problem connecting to half of the routers I've ever tried connecting to, but it's definitely a hardware issue because it behaves the same under Bootcamp and an Ubuntu Live CD.

krnhotwings fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Aug 8, 2011

KidDynamite
Feb 11, 2005

fleshweasel posted:

Yeah the reason it's using swap even though you have free ram is stop sperging in activity monitor and get some work done already.

The reason I'm "spergng" is I want to get an SSD soon and doesn't swap decrease an SSD's life?

Star War Sex Parrot
Oct 2, 2003

KidDynamite posted:

The reason I'm "spergng" is I want to get an SSD soon and doesn't swap decrease an SSD's life?
You're never going to hit the limit of write-cycles on flash in the lifetime that you own it. You're also never going to stop an OS with proper memory management from swapping, regardless of how much RAM you throw at it.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

11" Air bag/sleeve search update:

I ordered the STM Jacket extra small last night

http://www.stmbags.com/catalog/laptop-bags/jacket-extra-small-laptop-sleeve/

I bought a Targus 12" bag but there's an extra inch of room, made it really awkward to carry.

http://reviews.targus.com/8826/TSS12503US/targus-targus-12-netbook-sleeve-with-accessory-pocket-reviews/reviews.htm

I'll probably end up getting the Booq Viper which I was trying to avoid because it's $55, plus I wanted something I could carry the power adapter in as well.

flyboi
Oct 13, 2005

agg stop posting
College Slice

Star War Sex Parrot posted:

You're never going to hit the limit of write-cycles on flash in the lifetime that you own it. You're also never going to stop an OS with proper memory management from swapping, regardless of how much RAM you throw at it.



HOW DARE YE OSX!!!!

The Illusive Man
Mar 27, 2008

~savior of yoomanity~
Okay, here's a dumb question: what's the difference between 'inactive' memory and 'free' memory? I'm guessing a difference of unallocated memory versus allocated but not currently in use, but just wondering if there's (likely) more to it than that.

e: Now that I think of it, I have no idea what 'wired' means either. :downs:

The Illusive Man fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Aug 8, 2011

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Space Racist posted:

Okay, here's a dumb question: what's the difference between 'inactive' memory and 'free' memory? I'm guessing a difference of unallocated memory versus allocated but not currently in use, but just wondering if there's (likely) more to it than that.

e: Now that I think of it, I have no idea what 'wired' means either. :downs:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1342

Free memory

This is RAM that's not being used.


Wired memory

Information in this memory can't be moved to the hard disk, so it must stay in RAM. The amount of Wired memory depends on the applications you are using.


Active memory

This information is currently in memory, and has been recently used.


Inactive memory

This information in memory is not actively being used, but was recently used.

For example, if you've been using Mail and then quit it, the RAM that Mail was using is marked as Inactive memory. This Inactive memory is available for use by another application, just like Free memory. However, if you open Mail before its Inactive memory is used by a different application, Mail will open quicker because its Inactive memory is converted to Active memory, instead of loading Mail from the slower hard disk.


Used

This is the total amount of memory used.


VM size

This is the total amount of Virtual Memory for all processes on your Mac.


Page ins / Page outs

This refers to the amount of information moved between RAM and the hard disk. This number is a cumulative amount of data that Mac OS X has moved between RAM and disk space.

Tip: Page outs occur when your Mac has to write information from RAM to the hard drive (because RAM is full). Adding more RAM may reduce page outs.


Swap used

This is the amount of information copied to the swap file on your hard drive.


Even more explaination: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Performance/Conceptual/ManagingMemory/Articles/AboutMemory.html

Bob Morales fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Aug 8, 2011

The Illusive Man
Mar 27, 2008

~savior of yoomanity~
Thanks. I'll just assume any basic computer questions I'll have can be answered by the Apple support page from now on.

DEUCE SLUICE
Feb 6, 2004

I dreamt I was an old dog, stuck in a honeypot. It was horrifying.
Have you guys had any problem with OCZ SSD's in OSX? I see some complaints about firmware updating, but it looks like they have a linux boot disk that should take care of that.

BlackMK4
Aug 23, 2006

wat.
Megamarm
My 13" MBP stuttered with a OCZ Vertex2 and would kernel panic if it went to sleep.

trinary
Jul 21, 2003

College Slice
There's an SSD-only 2011 iMac in the refurb store, and I want to buy it. However, I'd probably want to boot into windows every once in a while to play a game or something. Does Bootcamp still not work with external drives? Has there been any info on Thunderbolt changing that?

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

DEUCE SLUICE posted:

Have you guys had any problem with OCZ SSD's in OSX? I see some complaints about firmware updating, but it looks like they have a linux boot disk that should take care of that.

Why would you buy an OCZ?

sicjoke
Nov 14, 2005
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.

movax posted:

sicjoke: do you have something like Monoprice (the vendor of all the adapters in the OP) over in the EU? Would be cheaper than the Apple "official" adapters.

No Monoprice or equivalent in my part of the world but I am sure if I need to start buying additional poo poo the internet will come to my rescue. Besides... company expenses. :smugdog:

You never know, Apple might even bung me a free Mini Displayport to DVI adaptor. Stranger things have happened. Sounds like DVI is the way to go to fix my external monitor issues.

DEUCE SLUICE
Feb 6, 2004

I dreamt I was an old dog, stuck in a honeypot. It was horrifying.

Bob Morales posted:

Why would you buy an OCZ?

Because the 120GB Solid3 is $150? I dunno, I've never looked at SSD's until literally 30 minutes ago.

SeventySeven
Jan 18, 2005
I AM A FAGGOT WHO BEGGED EXTREMITY TO CREATE AM ACCOUNT FOR ME. PLEASE PELT ME WITH ASSORTED GOODS.

DEUCE SLUICE posted:

Have you guys had any problem with OCZ SSD's in OSX? I see some complaints about firmware updating, but it looks like they have a linux boot disk that should take care of that.

I've got a Vertex 2 in a 2010 MBP and I've only encountered one issue: In the event the machine suspends itself due to the battery running out of juice, it won't come back (hangs on the grey, faded out restoring progress screen). Other than that, no issues, however I haven't updated my firmware since I bought the SSD since I can live the with suspend issue (machine is plugged in 99% of the time) and I don't want to jinx it.

Many people are going to have a lot of less-than-positive things to say about OCZ and of course with any SSD you should have a solid back up plan in place!

flyboi
Oct 13, 2005

agg stop posting
College Slice

trinary posted:

There's an SSD-only 2011 iMac in the refurb store, and I want to buy it. However, I'd probably want to boot into windows every once in a while to play a game or something. Does Bootcamp still not work with external drives? Has there been any info on Thunderbolt changing that?

It's not a limitation of bootcamp, it's a limitation of Windows. And no, there is still no workaround and I doubt that Thunderbolt will address this issue.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

DEUCE SLUICE posted:

Because the 120GB Solid3 is $150? I dunno, I've never looked at SSD's until literally 30 minutes ago.

Read the SSD thread. They all have their ups and downs but don't buy an OCZ.

evensevenone
May 12, 2001
Glass is a solid.

flyboi posted:

I know it works on DVI cables because I use it on my 2009 Mini. I'm sure there's some reasoning behind VGA not having overscan controls because I think Windows has a similar problem. Been a loooong time since I tried using VGA but IIRC it was a PITA for me as well.
Usually the monitor does it. Some monitors are better/worse at sniffing out the size of the image and scaling it correctly. Some displays are better/worse at producing signals the display likes. VGA is really messy because it was designed for CRTs.

Does the monitor have any adjustments for size? You might be able to stretch the image out to fill.

Otherwise going to DVI will pretty much be guaranteed to fix the problem. And it will look better.

Thauros
Jan 29, 2003

Bought a used second gen MacBook inexpensively last Monday. Was functioning fine until today, now I'm receiving a message that the battery is not charging. The old charge on the battery is still present for now, and it can be run on the power supply. Is it worth getting a new battery, or does the problem stem from another source?

DEUCE SLUICE
Feb 6, 2004

I dreamt I was an old dog, stuck in a honeypot. It was horrifying.
Found a more reasonably priced Mac Mini bottom hard drive cable on powerbookmedic.com. Out of stock now, but it was $35 shipped.

Now I just need to figure out what SSD to put in.

brenter
Dec 15, 2004
Hey guys, whoa, big gulps huh? Alright. Well see ya later.
I've been streaming movies from Amazon from my 2011 MBP to my TV. I've just been using the Thunderbolt port to do this using a Mini Display Port to HDMI cable.

I'd like to start getting sound through my receiver instead of having to use the TV. My receiver does not have an HDMI port.

I understand that you can use the headphone port on the MBP to get sound, but was wondering what type of cable to use. Will coaxial work?

DEUCE SLUICE
Feb 6, 2004

I dreamt I was an old dog, stuck in a honeypot. It was horrifying.
If your receiver has optical, you'll want something like this: http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-THINTOSMIN6-Toslink-Digital-Optical/dp/B00016W6Y6

If not, a standard 1/8" to RCA stereo pair will work.

brenter
Dec 15, 2004
Hey guys, whoa, big gulps huh? Alright. Well see ya later.

DEUCE SLUICE posted:

If your receiver has optical, you'll want something like this: http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-THINTOSMIN6-Toslink-Digital-Optical/dp/B00016W6Y6

If not, a standard 1/8" to RCA stereo pair will work.

Will this one work? Need a longer length.

http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-27016-Velocity-Toslink/dp/B0002JFN1A/ref=pd_cp_e_2

topheryan
Jul 29, 2004
The Apple store employees told me there's no way to do a dual-monitor setup on an old Macbook 2008. Anyone able to confirm this? Just want to make certain before I ship only one of two of my monitors across the country.

flyboi
Oct 13, 2005

agg stop posting
College Slice
You can if you get one of those DualHead2Go things by Matrox but they're pretty lovely.

They "make" your two monitors one huge monitor so maximizing will band across both and if you have a lovely gpu it probably can't drive the resolution anyways.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

flyboi posted:

You can if you get one of those DualHead2Go things by Matrox but they're pretty lovely.

They "make" your two monitors one huge monitor so maximizing will band across both and if you have a lovely gpu it probably can't drive the resolution anyways.

I have a VGA-dual VGA one for sale if anyone wants it ;)

topheryan
Jul 29, 2004

flyboi posted:

You can if you get one of those DualHead2Go things by Matrox but they're pretty lovely.

They "make" your two monitors one huge monitor so maximizing will band across both and if you have a lovely gpu it probably can't drive the resolution anyways.

Yeah that seems expensive and unwieldy. I'm bleeding into the software thread now but how do I change my second display (external monitor's) background wallpaper? The default Lion one is bugging me.

Edit: Nevermind it finally decided to apply itself to both displays.

DEUCE SLUICE
Feb 6, 2004

I dreamt I was an old dog, stuck in a honeypot. It was horrifying.

brenter posted:

Will this one work? Need a longer length.

http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-27016-Velocity-Toslink/dp/B0002JFN1A/ref=pd_cp_e_2

Yup, any miniplug to toslink cable should work.

SmirkingJack
Nov 27, 2002

MEET ME BY DUCKS posted:

The Apple store employees told me there's no way to do a dual-monitor setup on an old Macbook 2008. Anyone able to confirm this? Just want to make certain before I ship only one of two of my monitors across the country.

I use a DisplayLink USB video adapter. It works pretty well, as long as you aren't trying to do video or anything close to intensive.

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Cmdr Will Riker
Mar 27, 2003

brenter posted:

Will this one work? Need a longer length.

http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-27016-Velocity-Toslink/dp/B0002JFN1A/ref=pd_cp_e_2

Monoprice has them in 3', 6', 12', 25', 35' and 50' varieties for pretty much nothing. http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10229&cs_id=1022902

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