Hercules monitor and VGA

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gusts

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Hello all!

I have got a Hercules monitor and I want to connect it to the VGA port of my laptop. I have attached the pinout for the Hercules monitor and the VGA. It's quite clear for me how do I connect these pins together. However, my question is: the VGA connector has ground pins for video (pins # 6,7, and 8) whereas the Hercules doesn't. What do I connect these pins to? Do I join them with the pins which are simply the ground?

Thanks and best regards
gusts
 
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This is very old, I was kid when I use that. What I remember you can drive monitor with CGA card, dont expect that monitor to work with VGA. Its not only in pins number and arrangement.
 

I worked with the HG card, CGA, Monochome adapter in the early PC-XTs.
The Hercules graphic adapter was a card for PCs of the 1980s. It supported a monochrome monitor thru a 9 pin connector. Like you show in your post. However I didnt know that existed a "Hercules Monitor".
Anyway, the Signals are different mainly because the VGA is color (using 3 signals, RGB) and the monochrome monitor only one. Sync signals, polarities and voltages may be different too.
Even if you manage to get the connection. The monitor will not support the resolution and the horizontal and vertical frequencies that are used in VGA monitors.
Also you can damage an old monitor by trying to make it work at a different frequencies than it was designed to support.
 

I too worked on the manufacture of video adapter cards in 'the early days'. There were Hercules monitors but if I remember correctly, they used the same scan rate as the normal XT monochrome monitors but had a wider video bandwidth to use the faster pixel clock rate of Hercules video cards. They did not have analog inputs so it would not be economically possible to convert them to VGA and I don't recall there ever being color versions.

Maybe we are all wrong and "Hercules" is a Chinese brand name for something else!

Brian.
 

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