w i c k e d    l u s h !

I’m currently part of the Joost beta program, but unfortunately, they do not yet have a version for PowerPC-based Macs (I use a 15″ Al powerbook plugged into my TV to watch DVDs and slideshows, and to listen to music via the stereo). So – I lugged a noisy old Sony Vaio into the living room, but the video card was perplexingly annoying.

It’s an ATI Radeon 9200 AGP card that I originally bought form CompUSA (I needed it quickly – I’d never go there otherwise. newegg.com rules!), and it has a VGA socket, an S-Video socket and a DVI socket. However, the real pain was that Windows won’t display if the card only has a TV plugged into the S-Video socket (with nothing connected to the VGA and DVI ports). When the machine first boots, the TV displays fine – shows the BIOS, and even shows the black Windows XP splash screen with the progress bar; however, as the welcome screen is due to appear (presumably when the video driver loads), the TV goes blank (blue), and stays that way.

I fixed it (eventually) by using Windows Remote Desktop to connect and install the Real VNC server, then disconnecting RDC and connecting via VNC (because when you’re connected via RDC, you can’t mess with the custom ATI video settings). When connected via VNC, I tried to set up a custom display configuration under Display properties->advanced->ATI displays; however, I got an error message because I didn’t have a primary VGA display connected.

At this stage, some Googling revealed it might be possible to edit the firmware (http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33718482&page=2), but hey – life’s too short for that kind of hassle. So – I went to Radio Shack (somewhere else I never go unless I’m desperate), and bought a 25-pin male VGA plug and 3 75-Ohm resistors. I then soldered the resistors across the red, green and blue pins & their respective grounds (search for “VGA pinout; see for example http://pinouts.ru/Video/VGA15_pinout.shtml). The resistors joined pins 1->6, 2->7 and 3->8. And actually, I lied – the resistors were 68 Ohm – Radio Shack didn’t have any 75’s.

So – plugged this into the vga socket, and the ATI control panel thought I had a primary display attached. I was therefore able to set up the TV to work (had to click the “advanced” button in the TV settings and check “force TV detection”), and – importantly – I was able to assign a hot-key to this display setup (I used F8). I also set the desktop resolution to 1024×768.

So – now when I boot the machine (with the dummy VGA load attached), the same thing happens – screen goes blank after XP splash screen – but if I then wait about 30 seconds, I can press F8 and the windows desktop magically appears on my TV screen.

Incidentally, I also tried to connect an IBM Thinkpad (with a built-in S-Video socket) to the TV, but that wouldn’t work either, even though it appeared that it should. Needless to say, the Mac s-video socket “just works”(TM).