DVI to VGA

[Thardy]

I switch my crt monitor to a flat panel monitor, using a dvi (F) to vga (M)  adaptor.  This does not work.  I have power but the screen is totally black can anyone tell me what's wrong.

[Jonathan]

Most likely that means that your DVI Flat panel does not support an analog signal.  Lots of DVI ports only support digital signals, but VGA is an analog type signal.  So just putting the plug adapter on often wont work.

If that's the case then you would need an analog to digital signal converter.  Unfortunately those generally run $200-300.  It's usually cheaper and better to just upgrade your video card to a DVI video card.

[mark]

Many of the monitors with DVI ports will also have a VGA port.  Technically DVI should give you a better signal quality... but in practice you can rarely see any difference.

[Ryan]

As stated it's most likely that your monitor will not accept a digital signal and many times just knowing the pinout of the DVI can help to know if you will be able to connect a different (analog) connection to it.  If you check out this awesome post on our techblog by Jordan it helps to understand the different DVI pinouts.

[mark]

I can't help it... I have to call Jordan on his plagiarism

See the Original DVI techblog

[Ryan]

Oh yeah, I forgot that the pinout for the different DVI connections on the

awesome post on our techblog

was actually done by Mark.  Sorry Mark. 

See the Original DVI techblog

[Jonathan]

Oh yeah, I forgot that the pinout for the different DVI connections on the

awesome post on our techblog

was actually done by Mark.  Sorry Mark. 

See the Original DVI techblog

The spammer strikes again..... well like a couple years ago,  But you get what i mean.

Thanks mark for the great post.