VT240 Monitor Error - 9

[Monitor detect line in the VT240] It's worse than pointless, it's actively annoyinbg. It can cause a perfectly useable configuration (VT240 box + keybaord + composite monitor) to give na error. I wodner if it was simply done so that people who couldn't follow the printset would have to buy a VR201. Surely not??? I have a much wose example of that. Some years ago I was setting up a system with a VGA monitor. The monitor was made by, I think, NEC, and had a DE15 socket on the back. With it was a cable with a DE15 plug on each end. Both looked identical. So I stuck one into the back of the monitor, the other into the system VGA socket. And got nothing on the screen. I then unplgged the cable from the montior and put a logic probe on what i thought were the sync pins. Nothing. And yet there were syncs on the socket of the system unit. After a bit more testign I foudn that the DE15 socket on the monitor was not the standard VGA pinout. And that the cable was therefore not 1-1 wired, and was not symmetircal. Plugging it in the 'other way round' got results. The 2 plugs lookked identical, identical moulded 'hoods', etc. The only differencve, on close inspection, was that the insualtion _between the pins_ was white at one end and black at the other. No labelling either. ARGH! Anyway, getting abck to the VT240, my guess itha tthe cable ahs 2 pins linked at one end, and on;ly later did DEC decide to use this as a calbe-presnt feature. I will buzz one out sometime to check. I am pretty sure one of the manuals on bitscvers says that the only difference between a VT240 and VT241 is the monitor (and monitor cable, of course). -tony