MBP and multiple monitors

MikeHiow

MikeHiow

MikeHiow

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I have a 15" MBP and two thunderbolt 27" displays.

Now I've connected Display 1 to the macbook, and Display 2 to Display 1.

Only Display 1 is working, however.

Do I need to do something special to make this work?
 
Should just work, what's showing up in Displays?

In theory, the two displays should become active, and the internal display should disable.
 
Well, the ATI card is supposed to be able to drive all three.

Profiler only shows on TB display connected, as does the display icon in the top bar (One Colour LCD, one Thunderbolt).

I'm not entirely sure what else I can try.
 
Something in my mind is telling me that you need to try and turn off the MBP's screen in order to get this to work. Assume that's done at software level but I remember reading about something like that when running two of those displays.
 
I've tried that by closing the lid and waking up the machine with an external keyboard (Which is how Apple recommend you do it), to no avail.

Not that it should matter, as it is apparently only the 13" MBP that needs to power down the built-in screen to run two TB displays, and even then it appears to do it automatically.
 
I'm thinking of one thing I may have forgotten to do, and that is clearing the PRAM. I thought about it, and then thought it couldn't possibly be that.

Now I'm home, I found in the manual that is the last trouble shooting step if there is no picture on the display (although, this is for a single monitor).
 
This was released recently: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1453

Might need to install this on both of the displays so that they work daisychained.

If you run it, I would recommend you connect each one separately and do them in turn.

There is also this for the Mac: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1407 But was released a good while ago now.

Don't forget to check software update ofc to ensure you have all the updates from there too =]
 
Hopefully it helps some people, as I couldn't find one piece of information on it.

It might have worked with the Display update, or even a fresh install of 10.6 following Apple's instructions (not plugging in Thunderbolt devices until the Thunderbolt update has been applied).

I'm happy though - I got my Lion upgrade code back in under 24 hours and now have three displays working :D (Laptop screen and 2xTB Displays). Now I just need to get a Thunderbolt hard drive so I can daisy chain a DisplayPort Cinema display on the end at a later date :D
 
I'm an IT Manager and Developer.

So partly for creativity and partly because I like to have stuff that "just works" :p
 
MikeHiow said:
... so I can daisy chain a DisplayPort Cinema display on the end at a later date :D
Click to expand...

Thunderbolt only supports two DisplayPort channels (the one in the MBP anyhow, MBA only does one), so no luck with that plan :p

Anand has a great article on the Thunderbolt controllers that's well worth a read.
 
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