[rescue] Rescued Sun servers, now what?!

[Andrew Jones]

On 02/19/2012 02:36 PM, Mouse wrote:
>
> There exist passive 13W3-to-DE15 adapters; some of them, at least, work
> for Suns driving peecee monitors - I own at least two such.  I've seen
> it said that some don't, because of pinout differences on the 13W3
> side, but I haven't looked into that in detail.
>

VGA uses separate H- and V- sync pins.  Suns sometimes use composite 
sync on a single pin, and sometimes sync-on-green, with no sync pins.

Those passive adapters are primarily for sync-on-green.  Most* PC 
monitors are just fine with sync-on-green signals, but they're confused 
by the garbage/noise coming in on their H- and V- sync pins.  Simple 
solution: clip the sync pins out of the VGA cable you use for your 
passive adapter.

* Nearly all LCDs will accept unusual analog signals, with varying 
degrees of good/bad behaviour.  I once had a $100 HP monitor that would 
display SoG perfectly, then overlay a "NO SYNC" error message on top of it.