(or "30 cent Russian VGA cable")

Required Materials:

The Steps:





You see the male and female ends? Yeah, those need to go.





An example of what you want to see.

But ours probably looks way worse than this.

Yeah this is what your wires should start looking like by now.

3 inches

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1.5 inches

-------.

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It may look like you're going to fry your computer, but don't worry (ok maybe a little).

Doing the monitor was much harder.

An objective look at it all.



Yay! It works!

Plate popcorn. No comment.

After finding out most VGA cables around here (Brisbane, Australia) only sell for $15 or higher (actually, I couldn't even find one for less than $25), I refused to buy any. I didn't want to wait 2 months for one to come from China either. Using my amateur electronics engineering knowledge, I forged one out of an extension cord and packaging tape.So here is how you build your own VGA cable.Extension cord (or anything with wires inside it) (our conductor!)Packaging tape (or any kind of tape...) (our insulator!)It is also really nice to have a dental kit on hand for the flexible mirror tool and a pair of tweezers to handle the tiny wires. Oh, and scissors to cut things.: Review the VGA connector.: Get out your cheap dollar store extension cord.: Cut off the ends. If you're feelingfrugal save them so you can wire them back up together at the end.: Take a flat, sharp object (I used a butcher knife), andcut around the wire about 3-5 inches from one end of the wire. You may have to slowly slice into it. Imagine trying to peel an orange without cutting through the flesh. Now remove the plastic bit with your fingers or the knife, but avoid cutting the wires inside! We are stripping the wire to expose the tinier wires.: Repeat step 4 until you think you have enough wire.: Cut off the long, recently exposed wire. Lay out one long strand of packaging tape on the non-adhesive side. Take 6 wires and put them on the adhesive side. Make sure they don't overlap! Finally put another strand of tape over the wires. You now should have a wire sandwich. We've essentially made a ribbon cable.: Now cut your wires out of the tape. Go very slow, you don't want to cut them in half while trying to separate them. We are doing this to get individual, insulated wires!: You'll now have to expose the ends of the wires. You can use a sharp object again for this. Be careful and take it slow. You'll need about 3 inches of wire exposed on each end for the next step. Do this for all your wires.: Fold all the 3 inches of exposed wire in half. We do this so when you fit the wire into the VGA connector, they will fit snuggly!Text art example:The wires will now act as a spring to hold themselves in-place.Ok now you have somewires! Time to use them. This is the easiest part in my opinion.: Review Step 1 again. Or just look at this diagram.We will be connecting the Red (1), Green (2), Blue (3), Red Ground (6), and Horizontal (13) and Vertical (14) Sync pins. Why only one ground? Well the grounds are internally connected. So we don't need to worry about them all. If you don't connect ground, the quality of the image gets really bad. I highly recommend you plug it in.: Hook up your wires.: Watch a movie.And that's it! I've heard other stories of people using nails and wire to create serial cables. Jeez people are crazy. Shout-out to ##electronics on freenode!