Displayport Daisychaining

Oscargot · April 6, 2017

I'm new to this kind of stuff so I'm not really sure what I'm doing.

I'm trying to connect two external displays by daisychaining to a 2011 Macbook Pro that my sister gave me but it's not working. I will outline the main reasons I think this is the case:

1) Second monitor (last in chain (Dell 2007FP)) has no DP inputs. I'm using a DP to DVI cable. Not only this but the monitor pre-dates MST by one or two years.

2) Macbook has a thunderbolt interface rather than DP 1.2 (currently just got a mini DP cable plugged in. Honestly have no clue about thunderbolt lol)

3) I do have DP 1.2 enabled on primary monitor (Dell U2414H) so it's not that.

It's not urgent I get this to work. It was more out of curiosity & procrastination than actual utility at this point.

Tell me if I need to add any additional information.

Thanks for any help.

Glenwing · April 6, 2017

6 hours ago, Oscargot said:

I'm new to this kind of stuff so I'm not really sure what I'm doing.

I'm trying to connect two external displays by daisychaining to a 2011 Macbook Pro that my sister gave me but it's not working. I will outline the main reasons I think this is the case:

1) Second monitor (last in chain (Dell 2007FP)) has no DP inputs. I'm using a DP to DVI cable. Not only this but the monitor pre-dates MST by one or two years.

2) Macbook has a thunderbolt interface rather than DP 1.2 (currently just got a mini DP cable plugged in. Honestly have no clue about thunderbolt lol)

3) I do have DP 1.2 enabled on primary monitor (Dell U2414H) so it's not that.

It's not urgent I get this to work. It was more out of curiosity & procrastination than actual utility at this point.

Tell me if I need to add any additional information.

Thanks for any help.

You can't daisy-chain with adapters, they both need to be native DisplayPort monitors.

Oscargot · April 6, 2017

49 minutes ago, Glenwing said:

You can't daisy-chain with adapters, they both need to be native DisplayPort monitors.

Thanks, that's exactly what I needed to know.

Out of interest, does the mini DP to DP cable plugged into a thunderbolt port count as an adapter? Looking to purchase a new monitor already as one of my old ones broke relatively recently.

Glenwing · April 6, 2017

13 minutes ago, Oscargot said:

Thanks, that's exactly what I needed to know.

Out of interest, does the mini DP to DP cable plugged into a thunderbolt port count as an adapter? Looking to purchase a new monitor already as one of my old ones broke relatively recently.

No, mDP is still DisplayPort, just a different connector shape. Also I do not think Thunderbolt 1 can daisy-chain monitors, because it uses DisplayPort 1.1 for its display capabilities. It works with Apple Thunderbolt displays but that may just be a special Apple thing, I'm not sure. I have tried daisy-chaining some Dell monitors (U2415) from a 2014 Mac Mini (Thunderbolt 2) and it did not work.