Dell M4400, E-Port Replicator, Dual-Link DVI

A dual link DVI cable requires 24 pins on both sides. If it doesn't have 24 pins on both sides then its a single link cable and you can't get the max resolution.

http://estore.circuitassembly.com/c...-displayport-adapter-cable-2-meter-p-287.html

My company actually manufactures this cable. I don't think that currently its of much help with this situation because there are no female mini displayport adapters on the market yet, only male versions. Single link solutions for this situation are not a problem but a dual link solution is still a problem for us that we're looking into. The only hope has been the dual link adapter for Apple products that Apple is selling for 100 USD. Unfortunately the reviews I've read on this product indicates that people are having lots of display issues when using this adapter. We have some large customers that are interested in producing a dual link version so we are working hard to engineer one for both displayport and mini displayport. The easiest single link solution would be this adapter: http://estore.circuitassembly.com/catalog/displayport-to-dvi-adapter-male-to-female-single-link-p-258.html and a standard single link dvi cable like this: http://estore.circuitassembly.com/catalog/digital-dvi-cable-single-link-18-pin-3-meter-p-69.html.

The single link link dvi to displayport cable is also a nice solution, but don't waste your money on the belkin one, we will have them available for around 10 dollars in a week or so.

If anyone else has questions about adapting DVI to Displayport just let me know.

Cheers

 

After working with Andrew, his company has created a solution. I have not tested it yet but there are now reviews for it up on the site. This is great news. Now, you must buy the apple adapter first but then you can buy this inexpensive adapter with it and you have a solution!!!

http://estore.circuitassembly.com/p...o-Displayport-Male-Adapter-Cable.html#reviews

Thanks Andrew!

 

has anyone bought one of these?

http://sewelldirect.com/Accell-UltraAV-DisplayPort-DVI-D-Dual-Link-Adapter-10.asp

looks like it is the answer to this forum! hopefully!
-Mark P.

 

I bought one so let me share my experiences.

Computer: X200s/Ultrabase
Monitor: Dell 3007WFP-HC
OS: Windows 7 Enterprise RTM

With the passive (i.e. not powered by USB) single link adapter cable that I bought from Lenovo, the screen would occasionally flicker. Basically, the screen would just blank out for an instant, possibly for a frame.

With the dual link cable, the flickers occur more frequently and sometimes repeatedly, spaced in approximately 5 second intervals. Overall the flickers are only annoying when they occur repeatedly. When they occur repeatedly, reconnecting the USB cable seems to help. I have not been able to determine the cause of the flickers. I have heard that the Apple MiniDisplayPort to DVI adapter has a similar problem and some managed to work around the issue by connecting the USB cable to the monitor instead. I have tried that and see no change.

However, there are few quirks with this cable, all of which are more annoying than the flickers.

1. When my laptop is booting up, either due a restart, a resume from hibernate, or just a cold boot, my monitor is off and does not display anything. The monitor only begins to display when Windows has booted to the logon screen. This occurs regardless of whether the adapter’s USB cable is connected to my laptop or to its Ultrabase dock. This also occurs regardless of whether the USB ports are configured through the BIOS to stay on even when the laptop is off.

2. Sometimes when the laptop has been booted to the Windows logon screen, the monitor still does not display. However, when I open the lid of my laptop, the monitor then starts to display.

3. When the laptop resumes from hibernate docked, the laptop is unable to detect the presence of the external monitor. When it occurs, reconnecting the cables rarely helps and fiddling with the display settings never helps. Sometimes this even occurs when the computer has been cold booted or restarted. So far I have managed to work around the issue by sleeping the laptop and then resuming it.

I suspect that #2 and #3 are caused by bugs in the Intel display drivers because when I run into issue #3 and managed to resolve it by reconnecting the USB cable, I get a little balloon in the system notification area indicating that the display drivers crashed and needed to be restarted.

 

I have now purchased this setup. I purchased the apple-dual-link DVI to mini-display port adapter (I think I paid about $80). Then I bought the adapter from Cicuit Assembly (See Andrew's link above)for about $17 (mini-display port female to display port male adapter). I'm now using that setup and it works beautifully!!! I'm running at full res (2560x1600). It is awesome!!! This is off of my dell Precision M4400 with docking station out through my display port.

I thought the cause was lost but this is the solution!!!! (expensive but hey I'd already sunk a bunch into the monitor and time had already passed so I couldn't return it. This was a great way to keep my investment running!!!)

Thanks again to Cicuit Assembly!!!

 

So the screen is flickering every 5 seconds? I'm not sure I'm patient enough to handle that.

And we have one report that the rigged apple cable does work? Does it flicker as well?

-Mark P.

 

Does it work better than apple's? If it does eliminate the flicker thing, that would be good. If it doesn't go with Apple's and the CA adapter as it will be cheaper...

 

I purchased the dell displayport to dual link DVI and it works great. out of the month i have used it, 2 days it acted up and the screen flickered about once every 2 hours. Not a big deal at all. A restart seems to fix the issue, but those 2 days i was busy and didn't want to restart.
VERY happy with the product so far.

 

Hi everybody

I have one question which is probably little bit out of this topic but I found an interresting issue after I installed Win7 Pro x64 on my M4400.

Sometimes I am using my DisplayPort (with Dell HDMI conversion) to watching films on my LCD TV. After I installed Win7 Pro x64 I can only watch the video but I can't hear any sound from my TV (only laptop has a sound). It just doesn't work at all :-( Previously I used WinXP Pro x86 and everything works correctly.

I have installed IDT audio driver properly.

Any help please? Thx.