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View Full Version : SUCCESS: Multiple displaylink adapters on Mavericks


emm386
03-11-2014, 04:51 PM
Four displays it total on this MBP 9,1:
(1) 15" Built-in
(2) Thunderbolt 27"
(3) 1080p 23" via UGA-2K-A Rev B
(4) 1080p 23" via UGA-2K-A Rev B

OS X 10.9.3 Beta (Version 13D12)
DisplayLink 2.1 Mac BETA Edition
(must download from here: http://www.displaylink.org/forum/showthread.php?t=61983, release version does *not* work)

All displays work as expected. No flickering. Only known artifact is missing apple logo on menubar for displaylink monitors.

Good luck!

JamesGuymer
03-11-2014, 06:11 PM
Legend emm386.........

working for me too, seems to depend where you plug the adapters in, I've put all of mine in the same USB Hub.

Also some screens don't seem to come on straight away, I'm using parallels with windows 7 and it seems to kick start them.

I'll let you all know if i encounter any issues

Cheers

James

UPDATE:

i have noticed a few things, I've had to unplug all 4 adapters before boot up and add them one by one (once logged in) to get it to work. The screens show but when you drag a window there it doesn't show

The easiest way to tell if its worked is when you go to system pref / display / arrangement, click on each display, if you get the red border then its ok, if you can't see the red border it hasn't recognised it.

alphadog
03-13-2014, 02:30 PM
I would like to know why some see better results with the 2.1 beta drivers then with the released version.

wditters
03-14-2014, 04:51 PM
True, it may work (10.9.3 13D17) but the screen and mouse lag are immense ..

rMBP 15 Haswell - Lenovo USB 3.0 dock - 2x Lenovo L2440p DVI

lancehart
03-14-2014, 07:24 PM
Thanks emm386!

http://lancehart.com/DisplayLink/all4working.jpg

All 4 of mine are working again!!! Up until today I was only able to use 1 external monitor. Based on these results, the issues should be able to be fixed by DisplayLink. I'd love to hear a response from someone at DisplayLink about this considering they keep blaming the issue on Apple.

-Lance

Carlo
03-15-2014, 10:24 AM
Thank you everyone for sharing your findings.

What we know from Apple is that one basic OS issue is Mavericks identifying the different displays based on the wrong information.
The multiple displays behaviour at the moment is depending, among the other things, on the order the displays are connected (for USB screens this also depends on the USB topology) and the order the drivers are loaded.

Reinstalling any driver can change the loading order so if you have something that works I'd avoid changing any drivers, including OS updates.
I for example had a brief two weeks with everything working but that is long gone.

On top of the basic multiple displays OS issue we have added further workarounds from the beta to the final 2.1 to avoid issues with even one screen connected, especially with HDMI screens.
We are going to re-balance the workarounds in the next SW update - very soon! - and while your feedback would be very useful I don't think it would be a good idea for you to potentially break a setup that works.

Cheers,
Carlo

Carlo
03-18-2014, 05:23 PM
Hi All,

Just spent quite some time with the old 2.1 beta. Again: this is not the first time that we check that mix of workarounds.

I actually saw the layout being restored correctly once with a specific USB topology. The rotation was still broken though.
After that, no success: I tried all sort of topologies and the layout is always going back to default.

This confirms our earlier findings but it was worth another shot.
Going now to install the 2.2 beta again: Safari is so much better.

Carlo

hydrostarr
03-18-2014, 09:13 PM
New user here, just ordered an UGA-2K-A for my MacBook Air 2013 running 10.9.2. Have we settled on a suggested driver(s) revision for my "fresh" install, for near-term-workaround purposes (to get around 10.9.x problems)?

I plan run 1 monitor from my Thunderbolt port, 1 (and only 1) other external monitor from the UGA-2K-A attached to either one of my MBA's USB 3 ports. Is either 1 of my MBA's qty-2 USB-3 ports potentially better than the other?

Any other installation instructions, tips?

sgniwder
03-19-2014, 11:25 PM
New user here, just ordered an UGA-2K-A for my MacBook Air 2013 running 10.9.2. Have we settled on a suggested driver(s) revision for my "fresh" install, for near-term-workaround purposes (to get around 10.9.x problems)?

I plan run 1 monitor from my Thunderbolt port, 1 (and only 1) other external monitor from the UGA-2K-A attached to either one of my MBA's USB 3 ports. Is either 1 of my MBA's qty-2 USB-3 ports potentially better than the other?

Any other installation instructions, tips?

I have pretty much the same setup as emm above, except I'm using 3 Dell monitors. 2 with DL StarTech adapter and 1 with VGA/Thunderbolt. I tried the 2.1 driver, but it didn't work at all, so I reverted back to the 2.1 beta and have been operating like this since Mavericks with mostly success. If anything ever goes haywire, as long as I restart the laptop, it works fine.
In my opinion, you should stick with the 2.1 beta and as long as you don't use 2 monitors, you should be fine like this.

jd3103
05-19-2014, 09:35 AM
So on the 10.9.3 GM I've found that unloading the Displaylink kext tends to work for me, but it may be useful for others.

9/10 times this rebooted my machine but seemed to work fine as soon as it started back up!

This is the process I followed to get 2x external displays plus my Macbook Air (2013 "ultimate" spec) built in LCD working:

- Open Terminal
- Type in the following: sudo kextunload /Library/Extensions/DisplayLinkDriver.kext
- Confirm admin user password

After a reboot (which happens automatically - Mac OS does state that it was an unexpected shutdown so it looks like this actually initiates a kernel panic) everything works fine for me every time I do it.

Not sure this will work for everyone but it works for me so I thought I'd share :-)

For the DisplayLink guys - it seems this process bumps the kexts down the load order on the reboot (according to kextstat), to where it's loading after all of the IOkits. Previously, it was loading pre-some of the IOkits so maybe this could be a launchd-based fix?