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Re: VGA PDA alternative: Power on VGA connector

From: "Brian Empey, P.Eng." <>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 17:31:27 -0700

Tony Havelka wrote:
> 
> > Good idea.
> > Our SMPS generates 5v @ 1Amp for the USB HOST ports.
> > Then there's another switcher off that for the 3.3volt power
> > for the electronics. We'll have over 3/4 amp available for
> > USB devices or external devices from the 5-volt supply. We're
> > tight on connector space, but not all pins are used on the
> > VGA connector. Do any HMDs draw power from the DE-15 connector?
> 
> No and I would recommend to avoid putting power on the VGA connector.  Great
> for HMDs, could prove disastrous when you plug a regular monitor into it.
> 

Actually, in order to have Plug-And-Play work even when the PC is powered
up BEFORE the monitor, all DDC compliant video cards (and card with a
"Royal Blue" colored DE-15 connector) have 5-volts on pin #9.
Pins 12 & 15 are DDC Data and Clock (respectively) and those 3 pins (plus
GND) allow the video card to read the configuration of the DDC serial
memory chip in the monitor.

(FYI: DDC is just a protocol on top of I2C -- with the additional feature
that in DDC version 1, the monitor clocks out 1 bit of data on every V-sync
signal from the monitor.  Thus it took almost 15 seconds to read 128 bytes
of data from a 70 Hz monitor.  But in DDC 2, the CLOCK signal  was added,
and once the memory chip sees activity on the clock-pin, it switches from
DDC 1 mode to DDC 2 mode.   This is the kind of trivia that steals space
from useful information in your brain after working on KVM switches for a
while :)

I'm not sure how useful this is, but for anyone looking for a 5-volt source
off a computer without touching the PS2 or USB ports, the VGA connector is
another option.

Brian

PS: If anyone wants to write their own code to read the information from
their monitor, here's a link to a commonly used DDC monitor chip:

 www.microchip.com/1010/pline/memory/memdvice/ic/0to1/devices/24lc41a/

Note that pin #7 is "VCLK" which connects to V-Sync for DDC-1 compliance.

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