The Substantially Similar Weblog

I just spent about an hour-and-a-half trying to find a monitor cable. What I wanted was a 10-foot DB15 male to HDDB15 male cable. DB15 is the old “low density” (two rows) monitor connector used on old Mac monitors. HDDB15 is the newer “high density” (three rows) monitor connector used for PC VGA monitors. I found lots of adapters, but no cables that had the DB15M-HDDB15M ends.

I have this very old gigantic monitor (weighs about 70 pounds) that actually has both the HDDB15F and DB15F ports; however, the HDDB15F port doesn’t seem to work, so I’m stuck with the DB15F port. I was using an adapter/cable combination, but because the set screws in the back of the monitor are broken, it kept falling out and I couldn’t figure out a way to keep it in—I tried tape, string, etc.. So I thought a single cable would be easier to keep from falling out.

I’ve discovered in this experience is that, despite the huge variety of offerings from pricewatch and froogle, there really is only a small set of products out there, and everyone is offering the same thing, albeit at different prices. I suppose what I really need is a custom cable, since what I want doesn’t appear to exist.

In any case, I ended up settling for a monitor/adapter combination where the adapter would be on the computer end rather the monitor end, hopefully making it easier to get the cable to stay into the monitor.

This is the kind of thing the web is supposed to make easier (Radio Shack certainly doesn’t have this item!). But I couldn’t find any cable website where I could just type in the names of the two ends of the cable and the length I wanted. That would have saved me a couple of hours.

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