Akimbo AP1200:Howto VGA on the AP1200

=Howto add a VGA port to the AP1200=

By clockworx

The following is a guide that should allow you to hook up a regular VGA monitor to your Akimbo AP1200 Box. I managed to find the correct pins for the header and tested it quickly using wires taped to the headers, but never "formally" set it up, but this procedure should work for you. Obviously, I take no responsibility for any damage you cause to yourself, your property, or pretty much anything! Do this at your own risk!

Parts List


 * Female VGA (DB15) port with some way of wiring it - I simply bought a VGA cable with at least on female end and cut off one end
 * IDC connector and ribbon (10 or more connections in 2 rows) in 1.27mm spacing - Lazy/easy way is to get 44-pin 2.5" IDE cable and use one end, since they are the same spec

=Understanding the Pin Layouts=

VGA Pin layout

For the VGA connector, you can easily find diagrams for the pin layout by doing a web search for "VGA pinout". If you don't want to, here's the easy way of knowing them.

If you're looking at your header, the pin numbering reads like a book, starting at the top left, going to the right, and starting again at the left for the next line. So the top row is pins 1-5, starting at the left, middle row is 6-10, starting at the left again, and the bottom row, is 11-15, again, left to right.

The pins we'll be concerned about are the following:


 * 1 - Red
 * 2 - Blue
 * 3 - Green
 * 13 - Horizonal Sync
 * 14 - Vertical Sync
 * 5,6,7,9,10 (You only need one of these) - Ground

If you are using 1/2 of a VGA cable as I mentioned above, you'll probably need to use a connection tester to figure out which wires correspond to which pin. I went through each wire, dragged the connection tester over the pin until I found a match, and labeled the wire by its pin number.

JVGA1 connector on the Akimbo

The VGA connector on the AP1200 motherboard is labeled JVGA1, and is located near the CPU heatsink. You can see it circled here.



Here is a close-up of the connector, along with a diagram of the pin layout. (The leftover blobs of solder are leftovers from a not-very-skilled wiring attempt)



As you can see from the diagram, we need to hook up 7 pins from the JVGA1 connector to the VGA header we have.


 * Pin 1 on JVGA1 connects to pin 1 on the VGA header (Red)
 * Pin 5 on JVGA1 connects to pin 2 on the VGA header (Blue)
 * Pin 9 on JVGA1 connects to pin 3 on the VGA header (Green)
 * Pin 6 on JVGA1 connects to pin 13 on the VGA header (Hsync)
 * Pin 8 on JVGA1 connects to pin 14 on the VGA header (Vsync)
 * Pin 3 and 7 on JVGA1 connects to a ground pin on the VGA header (use any of pins 5,6,7,8, or 10) (Ground)

If you're using the IDE cable to hook it up, it should be pretty easy. Your cable may be marked on one end (usually in red) by where pin 1 is, and just put that end of the connector onto the pin 1 end of JVGA1 (towards the rear of the Akimbo). From there, you can just count the the wires on the cable starting from 1 and connect them easily to the VGA header.

Once you're done, you can hook it up to test it to see if it works. Reports by linux_junkie say that the output still suffers from the same low resolution as the TV-outs, but there may be some options under BIOS to fix it.

Good luck!