14 Oct
2008
14 Oct
'08
12:50 p.m.
This is something I've never seen before; I'm trying to revive an old
dead Compaq for a friend of a friend.
I went to plug in a stock VGA cable (15 pin) and it would not go. The
connector on the Dell motherboard (this is a very very old 386) has one
pin blocked.
Someone here must know what that means; what do I do? grab the needle
nose and hack my cable?
-brad
14 Oct
14 Oct
1 p.m.
--- On Tue, 10/14/08, Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> wrote:
This is something I've never seen before;
I'm
trying to revive an old
dead Compaq for a friend of a friend.
I went to plug in a stock VGA cable (15 pin) and it would
not go. The
connector on the Dell motherboard (this is a very very old
386) has one
pin blocked.
Someone here must know what that means; what do I do? grab
the needle
nose and hack my cable?
That was pretty common at one point in time. Old monitors didn't have this pin (and a
few others...). A lot of PC/clone video cards from the 286/386/486 era are like this. It
normally only caused problems when you went to use the computer with a KVM setup - the
male-male VGA cables always seem to have all the pins filled. The solution is to either
use a monitor that doesn't have this pin filled, modify a cable, or do what I always
did - drill a tiny hole in the port connector with a hand drill.
-Ian
2:18 p.m.
I usually sacrifice a connector saver to resolve this issue.
Eric
On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 10:00 AM, Mr Ian Primus <ian_primus at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- On Tue, 10/14/08, Brad Parker <brad at
heeltoe.com> wrote:
This is something I've never seen before;
I'm
trying to revive an old
dead Compaq for a friend of a friend.
I went to plug in a stock VGA cable (15 pin) and it would
not go. The
connector on the Dell motherboard (this is a very very old
386) has one
pin blocked.
Someone here must know what that means; what do I do? grab
the needle
nose and hack my cable?
That was pretty common at one point in time. Old monitors didn't have this pin (and a
few others...). A lot of PC/clone video cards from the 286/386/486 era are like this. It
normally only caused problems when you went to use the computer with a KVM setup - the
male-male VGA cables always seem to have all the pins filled. The solution is to either
use a monitor that doesn't have this pin filled, modify a cable, or do what I always
did - drill a tiny hole in the port connector with a hand drill.
-Ian
1:20 p.m.
On 14 Oct 2008 at 12:50, Brad Parker wrote:
I went to plug in a stock VGA cable (15 pin) and it
would not go. The
connector on the Dell motherboard (this is a very very old 386) has one
pin blocked.
It can't be "very very old" if it has a VGA controller on the mobo!
Heck my Micronics 386 doesn't even have memory on the motherboard--
and it's a full-sized AT unit.
Cheers,
Chuck
1:25 p.m.
Brad Parker wrote:
This is something I've never seen before; I'm
trying to revive an old
dead Compaq for a friend of a friend.
I went to plug in a stock VGA cable (15 pin) and it would not go. The
connector on the Dell motherboard (this is a very very old 386) has one
pin blocked.
Someone here must know what that means; what do I do? grab the needle
nose and hack my cable?
-brad
Many of the VGA cables I have omit one pin, I think. If you need I prob
have extra.
Steve
9:45 p.m.
Brad Parker wrote:
This is something I've never seen before; I'm
trying to revive an old
dead Compaq for a friend of a friend.
I went to plug in a stock VGA cable (15 pin) and it would not go. The
connector on the Dell motherboard (this is a very very old 386) has one
pin blocked.
Someone here must know what that means; what do I do? grab the needle
nose and hack my cable?
Yep! I'm guessing you have a Dell 316sx, like me. I picked a monitor I
didn't care too much about and ripping the pin out. Works great. A lot
of old 8-bit ISA VGA cards have this blocked out, and the Dell
fixed-frequency monitor that came with my 316sx doesn't have this pin in
the cable.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
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participants (6)
-
brad＠heeltoe.com -
cclist＠sydex.com -
ian_primus＠yahoo.com -
korpela＠ssl.berkeley.edu -
steve＠radiorobots.com -
trixter＠oldskool.org