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Eizo FlexScan CRT monitor 13W3 and serial cables

I have an old Eizo FlexScan F78 CRT monitor, it's a very good quality monitor displaying in 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 mode. It has BNC inputs and Sun-like female D-sub input connector with 3 "bolts" for R, G and B colors and pins for other signals. This connector offers a full DDC-compliant lines and RGB/H/V signal inputs compatible with DB15 VGA standard. It's NOT pin-to-pin compatible with Sun,,, IBM, SGI or other 13W3 connectors.
It is possible to make a cable which allows to connect Eizo DB 13W3 monitor to normal card with 15-pin analog VGA socket. My cable is made from old Sun monitor cable, from which I took a plug and old VGA monitor cable which I soldered to plug. Pinout was discovered with ohmmeter and Eizo F980 schematic I've seen once.
 

Eizo DB13W3 pinout for FlexScan F980, F78 and maybe others: 1 - GND 2 - VSync 3 - SDA 4 - SCL 5 - Hsync 6,7,8 - NC 9 - to  pin 4 10 - GND A1: Red. A2: Green. A3: Blue. WARNING! In model F980, M52757FP chip is used strange way, colors are swapped, syncs are handled different way. Not like in datasheet.

 

Now VGA 15-pin connector pinout with DB13W3 corresponding pins in brackets: 1 - Red (A1 core) 2 - Green (A2 core) 3 - Blue (A3 core) 4 - NC 5 - GND  (to ground) 6 - GND R (A1 shell) 7 - GND G (A2 shell) 8 - GND B (A3 shell) - in fact they're connected together in most displays, so you can short grounds together.  9 - KEY 10 - GND (to ground) 11 - ID0 (not needed here) 12 - SDA (3) 13 - HSync (5) 14 - VSync (2) 15 - SCL (4)

My cable is based on some old monitor cable, not all grounds are connected and it works.

Now in Linux you don't need modelines for settings up to 1280x1024, as they're told by monitor to computer. For 1600x1200 you need modeline, which in my F78 monitor is:

"1600x1200_85.00" 230.00 1600 1664 1856 2160 1200 1201 1204 1240 +hsync +vsync

To activate this modeline, you should announce the following commands during X-window session (check is your monitor "VGA1" first! Some computers have "VGA" or similar, not "VGA1"):

xrandr --newmode "1600x1200_85.00" 230.00 1600 1664 1856 2160 1200 1201 1204 1240 +hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode VGA1 1600x1200_85.00
xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1600x1200_85.00

My Eizo has a problem in firmware, which disables most of its OSD. The only working thing is brightness/contrast setting which can be called by pressing joystick. All other menus are not working, auto-setup button is not working too, switching inputs works. The only way to tune this monitor is with Eizo program (for Windows only, tested 95 version in Windows XP, seems not to work in Wine as it needs serial port keys present in registry) and serial port link using Eizo's maintenance port and cable.
 

DSub 9 pin (DB9) female plug to the computer

DB9 F Mini DIN 8 M 2 5 3 3 4+7 6 5 4+7+8 6+8 2

Mini-DIN 8-pin male plug to the monitor

All non-specified pins are NOT CONNECTED. You need to connect pins 7+4 and 8+6 in DB9 connector.

MCbx, 2013

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