Displaying DVI to VGA, is it even possible?

[simonmd]

I have a problem with not being able to display my BIOS, due to the resolution (MSI 970 Gaming motherboard) not displaying on my LCD HD TV (The TV is a Toshiba 48L 1433d) via a Radeon HD6950 card. See this thread here for full details, http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2551673/change-msi-bios-screen-resolution.html

Anyway, been out and bought a DVI cable and an adaptor to plug it into the VGA input in the TV and no picture at all! I know my VGA cable and the TV port itself work fine as I've used it with my laptop. Any ideas? Without being able to do this, I can't access my BIOS and all the functions of my new motherboard are useless!!

 

[Epsilon_0EVP]

Make sure the port you are connecting to is a DVI-I or DVI-A. Otherwise, your DVI can only send out a digital signal, which a VGA device cannot interpret.

 

[boosted1g]

There is 3 types of DVI ports, DVI-A, DVI-D, DVI-I. Only DVI-I can be down-converted to VGA with just a cable/passive adapter (passive adapter means it just physically changes one port to a different port, active adapter requires a power supply and needs a circuit board to convert one type of data to a different type).

Most likely you are plugging it into a DVI-D port and that is why it is not working.

 

[Epsilon_0EVP]

There is 3 types of DVI ports, DVI-A, DVI-D, DVI-I. Only DVI-I can be down-converted to VGA with just a cable/passive adapter (passive adapter means it just physically changes one port to a different port, active adapter requires a power supply and needs a circuit board to convert one type of data to a different type).

Most likely you are plugging it into a DVI-D port and that is why it is not working.

Pretty sure DVI-A can also be passively converted, since it uses an analog signal.

 

[simonmd]

Thanks for confirming what I feared. Looks like i'll have to look for a cheap monitor just to access my BIOS!