Vintage Mac Community Begs Manufacturers for New Supply of Rare Dongle as Resellers Charge $250 : technology

[+] [email protected] 67 points 2 years ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (4 children)

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

in this case, apple display connector (adc) predates dvi, so they didn't really have any other option for supporting an all-digital signal path to an lcd monitor, especially not one that could also power the monitor and provide usb.

this happens a lot with apple proprietary connectors. lightning predated usb-c by almost 5 years, and it was a much better connector than the existing industry standard at the time (usb micro-b). it didn't really start to feel like a problem until many years later when usb-c started offering most of the same advantages and more.

[+] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (2 children)

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

the adc connector was mostly proprietary in the sense that nobody else used it. third party manufacturers had no problem making adapters and cables without apple's permission, as evidenced by the the belkin dongle this article is talking about.

what you're really asking for is an industry standard, which is different from an open standard. however, an industry standard requires the industry as a whole to buy in to it. if they say no, but you still want to solve a problem that their existing standards do not, what do you do?

industry standards also do not typically appear overnight. usually, companies put out multiple solutions trying to solve new problems, and eventually the industry coalesces around a preferred solution. USB was introduced in 1996 with full support for mice and keyboards, but it took nearly a decade to become the de facto connector for mice and keyboards.

[+] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

i don't think adc was encumbered by patents, at least not in any way that prevented other manufacturers from making use of it. it wasn't locked down behind special handshakes and a certification program like lightning is. it used the same signaling protocol that dvi ended up using, which is why passive adapters like the belkin one above were possible. the additional pins on the connector were used for power and usb. the specifications were freely available, and monitors, gpus, and kvms were released that used the connector in the late '90s and early '00s.

the problem people are haivng is that this connector did not see wide use, so cables and adapters are hard to come by 25 years after the fact.

putting vesa in charge wouldn't change anything here unless vesa decided to ditch dvi and push this connector instead. however, that probably wouldn't have happened, because their constituents (most wintel pc makers) would have preferred the cheaper solution of not bundling video, power, and usb in a single cable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

i don't think adc was encumbered by patents

25 years after the fact.

If it were, they'd likely be expired by now.

I wonder if an adapter could be made some "DIY" way, if it needs to be active, it could be a fun project for someone into FPGAs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

It's incredibly easy to make an adapter. You really only need the female DVI and ADC ports (you could probably sacrifice a few cables if you can't get the connectors, too), a breadboard and some wire. https://lookanotherblog.com/diy-adc-adapter/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

the adapter is passive since both connectors use the same signaling protocol

the problem is that designing tooling to manufacture a custom connector at scale is expensive, so nobody is going to do that until they know there is enough demand to at least cover the upfront cost of designing that tooling and manufacturing a bunch of these.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I didn't notice at first, the article itself links to a seemingly easy way of making a DIY adapter:

http://damntechnology.blogspot.com/2009/02/hacking-dvi-cable-to-build-adc-to-dvi.html

If the demand is low enough to not even bother stocking them anymore, it would seem like someone could offer to sell them on Etsy or something, doesn't seem to require much much tooling.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

You’re missing the point that if Apple had just given it to VESA, it would have become the de-facto standard instead of DVI because other companies would rather reuse ADC than design DVI from scratch.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

i think i laid out exactly why that most likely wouldn’t have happened

i don’t think there is any reason vesa couldn’t have adopted it if they wanted, the connectors are already extremely similar. the problem is they didn’t want a connector that also handles power and usb, because that would have raised costs for pc manufacturers

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

As a consumer, would have been pretty cool if DVI carried USB too.

Instead, almost every monitor bundles a USB hub that needs an extra cable. Not sure how that saved manufacturers money.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

you have to remember this was 1998, and apple was the first company going all-in on usb for peripherals, using it to replace the aging apple desktop bus.

the cost concern also has more to do with low end machines in that time frame. if the connector included it, then any devices that used it would need usb support. at a time when usb was still brand new, and most pcs that had it shipped with controllers that only supported one or two ports.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

ADC is incredibly inconvientient, because it doesn't support hotplugging. It also requires the computer to contain a power supply for the screen.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

They did, it’s called USB-C. Apple was heavily involved in the development of USC-C.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Luckily they are popular enough that you can get pretty inexpensive cables that allow USB charging.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Where? I haven't been able to find it

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Really? If you just look up "3DS USB charging cable" on a popular jungle themed online retailer it comes up with loads of them. Sure you can find the same on AliExpress or eBay.

And yes yours uses the same cables/charger as the 3DS.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Aren't those cables available in quantities though?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Thankfully, at least recently, most devices have settled on only a few standards. And some older devices can be modded to work with newer ports. I know rhere are some mods to add a usb-c port to the 2ds, and from what I understand they're not too difficult to do.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Also thanks to the EU forcing the manufacturers (of smartphones at least) to go for the same standard

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

The newest law covers pretty much everything one could think of being powered by usb, and more, especially now that with usb-c it can deliver higher voltages and currents, not just 5V/2A.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yes. I have and will be doing type C conversions a lot.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's the most hipster headline I've ever read. And on brand for Apple/Mac's to have a dongle issue...

[–] Dsklnsadog 14 points 2 years ago

This is sad in many levels.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I bet Fry's Electronics had a warehouse full of these things. Just have to figure out where they ended up when they went out of business.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Time to start searching Ollie's and Big Lots.

[+] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

WTF are they crying to Apple for?

They aren't? I didn't see anything in the headline, the article, or the change.org petition about them crying to Apple.

From the petition: "[Sign to urge] Belkin and other tech producers to recognize the demand for the Belkin ADC to DVI cable or a suitable alternative"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Couldn't someone just remake it or is it still protected with some corpo patenting bullshit?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It's not worth the cost. There aren't enough 20+ year old macs in the wild who need to connect to a DVI monitor to make the assembly commercially viable after tooling costs.

Though it's a very good representation of why non-standard connection schemes are a terrible idea. I would say that outlawing black mock turtlenecks would be an appropriate punishment, given that Steve Jobs is dead and we can't kill him a second time. But that would also seem unfair as it would mean we would have to all see Panos Panay shirtless all the time. That just punishes the rest of us.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

In another post on those topic a commenter revealed that it's quite easy to assemble one from basic cables that are cheaply available. It's just a matter of splicing and re sealing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

While my VGA card from 1990 had the 15 pin connector, still present on 2023 monitors

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They're getting rare, though. Certainly no longer the standard video connector they were 10 years ago.

They can certainly be found, but I don't know how long for.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

True, now it's HDMI everywhere, but I'd prefer DisplayPort maybe

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Aside from the first-gen Power Macs, which used NuBus, Power Macs generally had PCI slots.

The guy with a Power Mac G4 in the article definitely has PCI slots.

Can probably just put an old video card in the thing.

googles

Yeah.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7937922

Alternately, you could go with an older, slower, possibly cheaper PCI video card as well. You could use a PCI video in combination with the AGP card. Not sure if the AGP card is missing, if you can run with a PCI video only.

ATI made a couple of PCI Radeon cards for Mac, 7000 and 9200, I think, with VGA & DVI outputs. Might be hard to find these days.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I had a radeon 7000 PCI card back in the day, it was a steaming pile.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Neat, I have 6 of those in a drawer.

And two of the active (powered) adc to vga converters

And 3 or 4 old ADC monitors.

[–] Tippon 7 points 2 years ago

How big is your drawer? 0.o

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I've got like 5 of the original Apple ones in storage... I'm guessing they're actually worth something?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

You have around 1000 dollars there until some cable manufacturer see demand and undercuts you by half the price or more.

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