[MacGallant]

My friend has a PowerMac G4 667Mhz w. GeForce 2Mx 32mb videocard with a ADC 20inch Cinema Display. When I set it up for her about ~2 years ago it was running well. But last week she told me about a peculiar video problem that started happening. After bootup parts of the video (the menubar, icons, and windows) have a wierd static-like fuzzyiness but it'll go away after she put it to sleep and wake it up.

I tried zapping the PRAM, and it appeared fine until a reboot.

The only change she made was installing DSL and upgrading from Mac OSX 10.3.3 to Mac OSX 10.3.9.

When her G4 was off, I did notice the ADC connector was loose after inspecting the tower and I push it in and heard it click back in place.

She does have alot of books and paperwork piled on the computer desk and on top of some off her cables including the video cable.

Her videocard is a GeForce 2MX 32mb w/ ADC port and VGA port. I tried an LCD monitor w. a vga connector and it worked without problems.


So it seems that it is narrowed down to the ADC connection either on the geforce2mx videocard end or the cinema display's connector.

I'm guessing it has to be the acd port on the video card because if the cinema display is busted it shouldn't be working after sleeping & waking the G4.

Can anyone, esp. and AppleTech offer some advice? My friend is out of warranty. Thanks.

[serranot]

I have no advice to offer. However, I had a similar problem with the exact same machine and a Dell 2405 FPW attached to the VGA port. Whenever I booted the machine, the screen would be fuzzy and have odd artifacts. If I turned the screen off and on, it was fine, even after sleep. So go figure.

I installed an ATI Radeon 9800. Problem solved.

[new newton]

It's likely to be the ADC cable end, not the video card port. The swivel on the connector can cause problems. Jiggle it, get it working reliably, and then don't touch it.

[MacGallant]

Thanks for the input new newton! I spoke to an Apple Tech at my local Mac reseller and we came to the same conclusion that the problem was the ADC Cable, but replacing it costs ~$300-$400, so my friend is going to do the workaround by sleeping her G4 and waking it to get the screen back to normal.

[OreoCookie]

I second the suggestion to check the ADC cable. If it is broken, the Cinema Display needs to be sent to Apple for a replacement.

You can easily check if it the graphics card -- plug in another monitor with ADC. If you don't have that readily at hand, try just some other monitor, but using the same connector (e. g. with the ADC-DVI adapter).