On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 7:12 AM, Oren Beck <orenbeck@gmail.com> wrote:

The story seems to be centered on OSX for the EEE. Yet the implications are wider. This trick may lead to video and devices we thought not Linux usable being rethought.

http://www.hackaday.com/2008/04/26/ghost-external-vga-display-hack/

Or- one could hack the plug end from a vga cable leaving enough wire to make the loopback plug ?

I'd go for your idea of using the VGA plug - it would be much easier to rewire it for other modes, as different systems use different sense pins for stuff. It's more a matter of limitations of simple driver that seem to need this. The comments in the article discuss using it to get around the OS X installer needing a resolution that the native 800x400 display of the Eee doesn't output without an external display attached, and also that the Eee doesn't natively support 640x480 on the internal display that some games need. It's more of a quick hardware hack to sidestep resolution issues than a way to enable otherwise-unsupported hardware. Back in the day I ran a dial-up router at home on an old Mac Quadra 700. It was running NetBSD 1.4-ish or so and shared the dial-up to my LAN. It had a Mac 15-pin D-sub to VGA D-sub dongle with DIP switches that one cold use to configure for the type of VGA monitor attached. Being a server I'd just configure it for a simple 640x480 display and leave the dongle plugged in but no monitor. Back int he day people recommended the paper clip or other jumper wire to do the same effect but the dongle was much cleaner, safer and more versatile. That's one big reason I think your VGA plug idea is good. Jon.