How to get 2560x1600 on external display from MBA?

[Egal]

Hello,

I recently (in December) got an MBA (Model Identifier MBA2,1) 2.13 GHz. According to spec. this device should display 2560x1600 on an external screen.
But I never get to choose this resultion in the display settings. All I get is 2560x800.

Any ideas what could be done to get the MBA to show me all its possible screen resolutions up to and inclusing it's full resolution?

 

[spinnerlys]

What external monitor do you have, what resolution does it support, what adapter are you using to connect the display to your MBA?

Do you use this adapter?
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB571Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ&mco=MTA4MzU1ODY

It's needed for 30" monitors.

 

[Egal]

I use a Matrox TrippleHead2Go set to 2 X 1280x800 @ 60Hz connected through a MiniDisplay Port to DVI (http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB570Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ&mco=MTA4NTYxMDQ).

The screens are two Fujitsu P22W-5 with a native 1680 x 1050 resolution connected both via DVI at the TrippleHead device.

 

[spinnerlys]

I use a Matrox TrippleHead2Go set to 2 X 1280x800 @ 60Hz connected through a MiniDisplay Port to DVI (http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB570Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ&mco=MTA4NTYxMDQ).

The screens are two Fujitsu P22W-5 with a native 1680 x 1050 resolution connected both via DVI at the TrippleHead device.

I don't think you can power both screens at their maximum resolution with the MBA, as the maximum resolution is 2560x1600 and not 3360x1050, which you need to fully use the two external monitors' native resolution.

If you want just the 2560x1050 on your external monitors, you need the Dual Link adapter I linked to.

 

[Egal]

Thank you. I will try that. 2560x1050 would do ok. I always new I would not get full native resolution. Is there any reason as to why the normal Mini Port to DVI does not work?

 

[gnasher729]

I use a Matrox TrippleHead2Go set to 2 X 1280x800 @ 60Hz connected through a MiniDisplay Port to DVI (http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB570Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDA5OQ&mco=MTA4NTYxMDQ).

The screens are two Fujitsu P22W-5 with a native 1680 x 1050 resolution connected both via DVI at the TrippleHead device.

2 x 1280x800 = 2560x800.

The Matrox TripleHead2Go is set to pretend to the Mac that it is a single display as big as two 1280x800 displays. If you put two of these displays side by side, you get 2560x800 pixels. For 2560x1600 you would need four displays.

 

[Egal]

I purchased the connector mentioned above and a USB hub. I connected the USB hub and the new cables MiniDisplay Port to the MBA. The new cable also required some UBS connection, that went into the USB hub. Now the new connecter cable got connected through DVI with the Matrox TrippleHead2Go Digital. The Matrix device also got connected through the USB hub - A moshi USB/FireWire hub.

Now I could select 3360x1050 in the device settings for my external display. Immediately afterwards, however, the screens showed a scrambled display of the video output. I was unable to restore a clear screen output by switching to lower resolutions or lower refresh rates (something that often helped me with X11 when I over engineered the config files).

Magically, when I disconnected the Matrox device from the USB hub, waited for like 20sec, and plug it in again I got a nice a crisp 3360x1050 video output - Never knew the MBA would do such a high resolution. Even while my MBA is open (at 1280x800). Nice!

The only issue remaining is that when ever screen resolution is changed I get a scrambled output again and need to reconnect the Matrox device.

Thanks for your hint to the other connector cable!