Eric Schlaepfer's 13W3 Video Snake Oil Is Here to Save You From Badly-Wired Vintage VGA Adapters

Eric "Tube Time" Schlaepfer has built a handy device for anyone looking to get a usable video output from vintage computing hardware with a DB13W3 connector: the 13W3 Video Snake Oil board.

"Do you have an old workstation with a 13W3-style video connector? Are you frustrated with adapters that claim to convert this to a 15-pin analog VGA, but don't seem to work? Then this project is for you," Schlaepfer writes of his creation. "Because lots of the 13W3->VGA adapters out there aren't wired correctly, I made one that is universal!"

The board itself is simple enough: an entirely passive adapter with a DB13W3 connector on one end and a VGA connector, like any other adapter on the market. Rarely seen in modern hardware but a more common sight in workstations from the 1990s, in particular from Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics, the DB13W connector was far from universally wired — making rival fixed-format adapters a toss-up as to whether they'll work with a given machine.

That's where Schlaepfer's adapter differs: the board is designed with the connections broken out to pads which can be jumpered in a range of ways, effectively creating a universal adapter that can be wired for almost any configuration — then carefully labelled so you know which adapter goes with which machine.

"You will need to solder some jumper wires to configure the 13W3 adapter for the particular workstation you are using," Schlaepfer explains. "Ground pads are located next to the pads that are marked with the pin number that they are connected to. Using the table [for reference], connect the pads to ground, leave them floating, or jumper them to the H (horizontal sync) or V (vertical sync) pads."

The board's design files have been released on GitHub under the reciprocal Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.