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Vintage Mac Community Begs Manufacturers for New Supply of Rare Dongle as Resellers Charge $250 (www.404media.co)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[+] 65 points 2 years ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)
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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    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.

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  • [+] 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)
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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    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.

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  • [+] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 child)
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  • [–] 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.

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  • [–] 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.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    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 problem is they didn’t want a connector that also handles power and usb, because that would have raised costs for pc manufacturers

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 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.

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  • [–] 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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

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

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  • [–] 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.

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    • [–] 56 points 2 years ago (1 child)

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

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    • [–] 14 points 2 years ago

    This is sad in many levels.

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    [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    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.

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    [+] 10 points 2 years ago* (1 child)
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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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"

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    • [–] 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    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.

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    • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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

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  • [–] 23 points 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.

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  • [–] 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.

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    • [–] 9 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

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

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    • [–] 8 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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    • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

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

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