old 386 pc, vga port - but one pin is blocked?

[J Blaser]

Brad Parker said:

> This is something I've never seen before;  I'm trying to revive an old
> dead Compaq for a friend of a friend.
> 
> I went to plug in a stock VGA cable (15 pin) and it would not go.  The
> connector on the Dell motherboard (this is a very very old 386) has one
> pin blocked.
> 
> Someone here must know what that means; what do I do?  grab the needle
> nose and hack my cable?

The VGA connector specification shows that Pin 9 is not connected and sometimes used as a key, that is, blocked, see:

http://pinouts.ru/Video/VGA15_pinout.shtml

I doubt it would hurt any future use of the cable to pull/break the pin on your monitor cable, but if you want to keep that side of things stock, you could use a 1/32" bit and drill out the position on the motherboard's connector, to allow the pin to pass through the plastic.

- Jared