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Thunderbolt 2 adapter going into my M1 iMac not reliable

I have the M1 iMac. I've been using the old 27” Thunderbolt as a second display … used mainly for Text and Web. A typical work flow has FCPX on the iMac and scripts, notes, various files, etc on the Thunderbolt. That old display still makes a decent picture … but … I’m having an issue with the Thunderbolt 2 adapter going into the M1 iMac. It just doesn’t give a solid, dependable connection. I can go days/weeks without a problem but then the Thunderbolt Display will start flashing and then just go black ... and any app that is open on it flies over to the iMac. Plus it can also make my RAID external drop offline (I don’t know how or why) and that causes bigger issues. I have to jiggle and reset the adapter a number of times for it to settle down. I’ve tried 4 different adapters and it can happen on all of them. When I had an older iMac with the Thunderbolt 2 port that I could plug directly into, this never happened.

I'm planning to go to the Mac Studio with the Studio Display soon ... but I would like to keep the Thunderbolt as a second display ... but it's just not reliable.

Any ideas/suggestions/advice will be greatly appreciated.

iMacEdit

Posted on Jul 29, 2023 2:58 PM

Top-ranking reply

tbirdvet

Level 6

14,471 points

Posted on Jul 29, 2023 8:40 PM

The adapter may be fine but the "octopus" (built in) cable may be bad (common issue). You can get a TB cable and connect directly to one of the open TB ports on th display bypassing the built in cable and see if that works.

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Thunderbolt 2 adapter going into my M1 iMac not reliable

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