[G4] VGA Monitor on a Mac G3

[Doug McNutt]

At 23:16 -0500 5/27/05, Ron Michael wrote:
>I recently tried to hook up a Compag 140 VGA monitor to my Mac G3 266 Desktop w/ OS 9.2.2. The Compaq worked fine on my PC. It's hooked to the Mac VGA adapter I used previously on the Mac G3. When I "startup" it blinks for a second or two then goes blank. Anyone have a clue as to what might be wrong?

The monitor is probably shutting down because it is getting a horizontal scan rate that it cannot handle. There have been changes in the way Apple and monitor cards have attempted to handle those selections. Some depend on adapter connections that tell the Mac that you have connected a VGA monitor. Early Macs had three wires dedicated to specifying which Apple monitor was in use. A special combination was used for VGA.

Experiment with the monitors control panel and look for advanced settings that will allow you to choose scan rates. If you can get two monitors on the machine with a PCI card it helps a lot because you can see what you're doing with the control panel on another monitor.

I think it's safe to say that all G3-vintage Macs had VGA capability. Even some of the 68k Macs had it.

The Griffin Technology web site may be helpful.

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