Disclaimer

The content of this blog is my personal opinion only. Although I am an employee - currently of Nvidia, in the past of other companies such as Iagination Technologies, MIPS, Intellectual Ventures, Intel, AMD, Motorola, and Gould - I reveal this only so that the reader may account for any possible bias I may have towards my employer's products. The statements I make here in no way represent my employer's position, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of my employer. In fact, this posting may not even represent my personal opinion, since occasionally I play devil's advocate.

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Wednesday, August 10, 2016

My DisplayLink USB Display does not work when moved on MacOS X

BRIEF:



If UDSB display adapter connected to MacBook

is recognized, but not actually working,

try un-re-plugging Thunderbolt between MacBook

possibly 1-2-3 times.



DETAIL:



I use USB display adapters quite a lot, chiefly the Diamond BVU195 based on DisplayLink IP.



I use them a lot - one each at home and work - although less so now, since the Mac I am currently using can only drive one USB Display Adapter if a 30" 2560x1600 display is connected via HDMI or Thunderbolt, whereas with my old Windows tablet PC I often drove 2 or 3 USB display adapters. (Need to retry with El Capitan MacOS upgrade - I can hope that this may be fixed.)



Anyway... a very annoying problem with using these display adapters on a MacBook is that recognizing them when I move my Mac from work to home can be very slow, sometimes so slow as to seem never to happen. Similar slowness when moving from home to work, but perhaps not so long lasting.



At home I use a Belkin Thunderbolt dock, connected to a 28-port USB hub. At work, no dock, just a 7 port USB hub.



DisplayLink says the usual - unplug cables and power, ultimately rebooting MacBook. The last usually works. But it is a pain to have to reboot so often.



Sometimes just waiting works.  But it is a pain to wait an indeterminate amount of time, and then rebopot if still not working.  Walking away to do something else while waiting for the USB display to be recognized can hurt, because the problem seems to be worse if the MacBook goes into sleep after being plugged in but before the USB display is recognized.



UN-re-plugging USB and power does not help.



This morning, un-re-plugging Thunderbolt between MacBook and dock was what did the trick.  Had to un-re-plug Thunderbolt twice, because the DisplayPort display  nearly always comes up fuzzy the first time.



My DisplayLink device does not work at all when connecting on Mac OS X. – DisplayLink Support:



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