bigmessowires
Well-known member
I was thinking more about an adapter cable with a ball switch for pivoting like Trash suggested, or maybe just one with a regular hand-operated switch. But then I realized - where would that switch actually go? The adapter cable would go from the 15x1 header on the Pivot card to the video connector on the IIsi's back panel, so it would be entirely enclosed inside the IIsi. Having a switch inside the computer itself isn't all that useful. 
Maybe you could drill a little hole or use some other opening for two extra wires, so you could put a hand-operated switch on the outside of the case. That would work if you're willing to drill. But for the ball switch, it needs to be mounted on the monitor, not on the Mac. That's maybe another 4 feet away down the video cable, at the other end where the cable plugs into the monitor. I suppose you could use 8 feet of wire to build an out-and-back connection to the ball switch, and thread it through a hole drilled in the case, and then glue or zip-tie these new wires to your Mac-to-monitor cable. But that sounds pretty yuck to me.
Another possibility would be to split this into two parts: a 15x1 header to DB-15 adapter cable that lives inside the Mac's case, but doesn't do anything related to pivoting, and then an external pass-through dongle with the pivoting switch. If you put this at the Mac end of the cable, then it's basically just like building your own Mac-to-VGA dongle, like the MacFly or any of the others you can find on eBay for a few dollars. It could be a little simpler, with just a single "pivot" button instead of all those DIP switches, but it would basically be the same idea.
If you wanted a dongle thing at the monitor end of the cable, so you could use a ball switch for pivoting, then you'd need a Mac monitor cable (DB-15 cable) to connect the Mac to the dongle. I don't know how common those are, but certainly less common than standard VGA cables.
This all seems a little complicated. Anyone see a simpler way to do it?
Maybe you could drill a little hole or use some other opening for two extra wires, so you could put a hand-operated switch on the outside of the case. That would work if you're willing to drill. But for the ball switch, it needs to be mounted on the monitor, not on the Mac. That's maybe another 4 feet away down the video cable, at the other end where the cable plugs into the monitor. I suppose you could use 8 feet of wire to build an out-and-back connection to the ball switch, and thread it through a hole drilled in the case, and then glue or zip-tie these new wires to your Mac-to-monitor cable. But that sounds pretty yuck to me.
Another possibility would be to split this into two parts: a 15x1 header to DB-15 adapter cable that lives inside the Mac's case, but doesn't do anything related to pivoting, and then an external pass-through dongle with the pivoting switch. If you put this at the Mac end of the cable, then it's basically just like building your own Mac-to-VGA dongle, like the MacFly or any of the others you can find on eBay for a few dollars. It could be a little simpler, with just a single "pivot" button instead of all those DIP switches, but it would basically be the same idea.
If you wanted a dongle thing at the monitor end of the cable, so you could use a ball switch for pivoting, then you'd need a Mac monitor cable (DB-15 cable) to connect the Mac to the dongle. I don't know how common those are, but certainly less common than standard VGA cables.
This all seems a little complicated. Anyone see a simpler way to do it?
