Sticky on VGA?

[Clouds]

Could we please have a sticky topic explaining clearly what the situation is on VGA? I know i run the risk of angering people by asking for this, however i have searched the message boards and google as to what the situation is if you have a VGA monitor and although there are some complex posts that seem to hint at ways of doing this (without actually explaining how in a basic way), mostly you get topics started and then ended by someone helpfully saying this has been covered before...

I apologise but as someone who has a vague understanding of computers, i have yet to find a good explanation of what the situation is and a guide as to how to do this? My understanding from the posts is that it may be possible in some convoluted fashion (which i don't entirely understand) but the quality may well be poor and it will be expensive? This is kind of an important topic i feel, because i doubt i am the only one with an out of date pc monitor that only supports VGA and the cost of having to buy a new monitor largely puts me off actually committing to buying a raspberry pi.

[grumpyoldgit]

There are probably dozens of topics that people would consider to be equally important. That is why there is a FAQ and wiki. For your information the information is covered here

http://elinux.org/RPi_Screens

http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

[poing]

This seems successful: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... =63&t=5049

Otherwise you might want to look at this tutorial that explains how to install VNC server. Then you run the Pi without a screen and use your computer to display the Pies screen information over the network: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... =26&t=6247

[Joe Schmoe]

This seems successful: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... =63&t=5049

Yes, but keep in mind that that thread comes with lots of caveats. I got the impression that it didn't really work - for the layman's (not hacker) definition of "work".

Otherwise you might want to look at this tutorial that explains how to install VNC server. Then you run the Pi without a screen and use your computer to display the Pies screen information over the network: http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... =26&t=6247

Yes. I think this is really the best way to display the Pi on VGA. Well done!

The only caveat here is that there can be a chicken-and-egg problem - where the very first time, after you've just unboxed your brand new Pi, you probably will want to connect it directly to a screen (and keyboard/mouse). Yes, I know this isn't strictly necessary (although it may involve modifying the SD card from your desktop PC, to get SSH enabled, since many of these distros [stupidly] ship with SSH disabled).

[poing]

Yes, I plan to connect the Pi to my analog TV (through the video recorder, that is) first to install VNC. Hope that works