VGA - DVI confusion - should this work?

[tomdickandharry]

Hello,

I am the proud new owner of :-

- a Samsung Syncmaster LS27A850DS, and
- an HP Proliant Microserver; a small PC with a VGA output

I have what I believe to be a VGA - DVI cable. I understand that the monitor has to be able to accept DVI-I, with an analogue signal. The spec page for this monitor just says 'DVI' so given that it is a current reasonably top-end monitor, I thought it would, but upon examining the user manual it seems it might only have support for DVI-D. The spec page for the PC just says 'VGA port'.

So I'm not getting any signal across. Does this mean I actually have to purchase a VGA monitor just to get this thing set up? Is it really the case that monitors today do not even support VGA output? This is an expensive mistake!

Here is the cable I am using:

Here is the input on the monitor:

Here is the output on the PC:

Can anyone advise me if this should be possible?

Thank you for any advice,

yours,
Darren

 

[cadder]

There are different types of DVI and some of them do include analog signals and will work with an adapter. OTOH my Mac Mini does NOT provide the analog signal and won't work with a VGA monitor even with an adapter.

Near the bottom of this page there is a graphic that shows the different types of DVI connectors.

http://www.datapro.net/techinfo/dvi_info.html

 

[nukemaster]

You are stuck with a adapter to go from DVI on a supported computer to VGA. You are suing it backwards to begin with. The screens DVI does not accept analog at all.

What other video ports do you have(on the computer)? HDMI can be converted to DVI.

EDIT, looks like VGA only.

Hmmmm. They make adapters from VGA to DVI, but they are costly as they have to convert the analog signal to digital.

You are almost cheaper with a cheap PCI-E video card to use for setup then remote admin from then on and remove the video card.

 

[tomdickandharry]

No other output on the PC - VGA only :\

 

[nukemaster]

No other output on the PC - VGA only :\

I edited above, but yeah, i saw that. Some users have installed a cheap video card into the pci-e slot(low profile).

you have any old pci-e video cards. If you remove the bracket, you may be able to install it just to get remote admin enabled.

 

[tomdickandharry]

hey thank you for the PCIe idea! Going to have to be careful with measurements but hopefully I can find a cheap one that'll do the trick - much better than having to take someone's grimy old VGA monitor from craigslist

Not sure what you mean by 'just to get remote admin enabled' though? I'm aware the Proliant does have remote admin, but the PCIe would have a DVI output and that's what I'd use from that point on..

 

[nukemaster]

Are you going to use this as your computer? It is generally built for file storage i think.

Remote admin would allow you to access the computer from another so you can lets say get updates and whatnot.

Your pci-e card should be low profile and single slot. Watch out as many low profile cards still use a heatsink too tall for your case.

See here for some images of what i mean. I would have filed that card heatsink until it fit

http://www.edwardsd.co.uk/work/blog/2011/01/02/hp-microserver-as-htpc/

 

[tomdickandharry]

nuke, thank you for the info. I've got the motherboard out off the case and will find the smallest pci-e video card in the world.

I'll be using the machine as a xen/linux server for small bits of hosting and generally just having a linux box in the house to play around with (I use macs at home)

thx!

 

[tomdickandharry]

Sapphire Radeon HD5450 did the job nicely, thank you for your help everyone!

 

[nukemaster]

Enjoy

 

[tomdickandharry]

Best answer selected by tomdickandharry.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey