Connecting new Mac to very old monitor

[Wingsley]

I'm starting to investigate work-from-home solutions so that I can stabilize my income while helping my elderly (and not-so-good health) parents.

One on my immediate concerns is to phase-out my aging computer setup. (I'm currently on a late-2013 iMac)

I want to buy a new Mac Mini to start, but the configuration I want to get would make good monitors out of my reach for at least a couple months. But I may have a solution...

I remembered last night that I have another ace-in-the-hole... Back in 2007, my previous 2003-vintage G4 "igloo" iMac started having problems with its built-in 17-inch LCD display. It would flicker and ultimately fail. A friend recommended that I buy an Acer AL1716W-A 17-inch external LCD display and a VGA-to-Apple Display Adaptor so the Acer could be driven by the iMac. Guess what? I not only still have the old "igloo" iMac (it runs some old 1990s-vintage software I use, once-in-a-blue-Moon), but I still have the Acer display. So if I need a monitor to connect to a new Apple Silicon computer, voila!

My question is this: what connection options do I have to plug in the Acer to, say, an Mac Mini or a new MacBook Pro? Is there a way to bridge HDMI to VGA? Or is USB-C to VGA the only way?

 

[zgagato]

I think there are usb c hubs with vga connections in them. Just not very common.

edit: i have found this on amazon:

BENFEI USB C to VGA Adapter, Thunderbolt 3/4 to VGA Adapter Compatible with iPhone 15 Pro/Max, MacBook Pro/Air 2023, iPad Pro, iMac, S23, XPS 17, Surface Book 3 and More [Aluminium Shell,Grey]

USB C to VGA Adapter, BENFEI Thunderbolt 3 to VGA Adapter Compatible for MacBook Pro 2019/2018/2017, MacBook Air/iPad Pro 2018, Samsung Galaxy S10/S9 [Aluminium Shell,Grey]

www.amazon.com

Hdmi to vga converters are not cheap, are running very hot and fail because of that. And they had driver problems in Windows 10 even, left alone the Mac.

 

[Fishrrman]

I reckon the USBc-VGA adapter linked to by zgagato above will do just fine.

Hmmmm....
I wouldn't buy an m1 Mini right now, unless I had-to-have-it.
A new and much-improved Mini will be coming later this year.

 

[ruka.snow]

I reckon the USBc-VGA adapter linked to by zgagato above will do just fine.

Hmmmm....
I wouldn't buy an m1 Mini right now, unless I had-to-have-it.
A new and much-improved Mini will be coming later this year.

No guarantee of new mini and the current M1 mini is a really cracking little machine.

As for VGA monitors. My husband ran one with his Mac mini for years and M1 until one of my screens freed up. It worked well enough other than 1080 not being fantastic for macOS, but it wasn’t hindering him sending off emails.

 

[Amethyst1]

Hdmi to vga converters are not cheap,

eBay is full of HDMI to VGA adapters selling for less than $10. No idea if they’re any good though.

 

[Wingsley]

New concern: I seem to remember from another thread that if I plug-in one of the M1 Mac Mini's ThunderBolt/USB-C ports for video monitor use, that somehow makes the Mini's other ThunderBolt/USB-C port useless. Is this correct? If so, that would be a major problem.

 

[Wingsley]

I reckon the USBc-VGA adapter linked to by zgagato above will do just fine.

Hmmmm....
I wouldn't buy an m1 Mini right now, unless I had-to-have-it.
A new and much-improved Mini will be coming later this year.

Yeah, I hear you. I'm trying to not let that concern cause me to loose any sleep, but I have no doubt I'll toss and turn on that one.

I would LOVE to wait and see if Apple actually releases a more powerful Mac Mini with an M1Pro or M2Pro processor on board, but actual availability cold be weeks away or MONTHS away. My eventual plan is to get a MacBook Pro and to use the Mini as a secondary machine anyway. It would only serve as a primary machine until I could build up $$$ for a larger external display and a more powerful laptop.

For right now, I want to stabilize a more reliable WFH setup for income, then when I'm sure that the income will be there I'll commit to new hardware. That way, if Apple does introduce something sooner rather than later, I want to be ready to take advantage of even newer hardware. So, that's my way of saying that I really do want to get this show on the road, but in order to actually get the most out of new hardware I'd first want to stabilize my own situation anyway. So, hurry up and wait! ?

 

[Amethyst1]

New concern: I seem to remember from another thread that if I plug-in one of the M1 Mac Mini's ThunderBolt/USB-C ports for video monitor use, that somehow makes the Mini's other ThunderBolt/USB-C port useless. Is this correct? If so, that would be a major problem.

You won't be able to connect another DisplayPort/Thunderbolt/USB-C monitor in that case, but you'll still be able to connect other Thunderbolt/USB-C devices.

 

[QuietOC]

Nevermind

 

[pmiles]

Perhaps the prudent move would be to settle into your new living situation before making any purchases. For one, it will give you time to evaluate your true needs based on actual usage.

I'm making the assumption here that you will be working from home in the same residence as your elderly parents. Depending on their state of health, you may find yourself in a full-time caregiver situation, which severely hampers your ability to do much else. Will you be taking them to appointments, refilling prescriptions, dealing with physical therapy, shopping, cooking... etc? All these things weigh heavily on your ability to work from home. For some, it really is not possible to do both (be a caregiver and work from home). Many additional distractions come into play. In essence, a caregiver is a full-time job.

I say this with all honesty as I have taken a leave of absence from work to care for my mother who had suffered a stroke. My employers offered me the opportunity to work from home. As it turned out, every waking moment was spent caring for my mother. There literally was no time to do much else. Your situation may be different, but the reality is, if they can no longer care for themselves, you are now going to be doing all the things that they can no longer do for themselves on top of everything else you need to do for yourself. After about 3 months it was clear that I could not possibly return to work unless I moved her into assisted living. Nor could I work from home in any capacity due to the constant need for supervision and care. At my age, returning to the workforce, say after a 10 year hiatus would have been financial suicide. You have to consider your own well-being in the long term because this is a long term type of commitment.

 

[Mousse]

eBay is full of HDMI to VGA adapters selling for less than $10. No idea if they’re any good though.

I don't see why it not. HDMI is just DVI with sound. Cheap HDMI to VGA works, but don't expect optimal refresh rates.

 

[Wingsley]

Perhaps the prudent move would be to settle into your new living situation before making any purchases. For one, it will give you time to evaluate your true needs based on actual usage.

I'm making the assumption here that you will be working from home in the same residence as your elderly parents. Depending on their state of health, you may find yourself in a full-time caregiver situation, which severely hampers your ability to do much else. Will you be taking them to appointments, refilling prescriptions, dealing with physical therapy, shopping, cooking... etc? All these things weigh heavily on your ability to work from home. For some, it really is not possible to do both (be a caregiver and work from home). Many additional distractions come into play. In essence, a caregiver is a full-time job.

I say this with all honesty as I have taken a leave of absence from work to care for my mother who had suffered a stroke. My employers offered me the opportunity to work from home. As it turned out, every waking moment was spent caring for my mother. There literally was no time to do much else. Your situation may be different, but the reality is, if they can no longer care for themselves, you are now going to be doing all the things that they can no longer do for themselves on top of everything else you need to do for yourself. After about 3 months it was clear that I could not possibly return to work unless I moved her into assisted living. Nor could I work from home in any capacity due to the constant need for supervision and care. At my age, returning to the workforce, say after a 10 year hiatus would have been financial suicide. You have to consider your own well-being in the long term because this is a long term type of commitment.

Just to clarify...

You're making several assumptions there that do not match up with my situation. My father tends to my mother part-time and I tend to her a little bit, mostly helping him. WFH is possible in my situation.

 

[Wingsley]

I'm getting an itchy trigger finger right now...

Apple Store- Refurbished

Refurbished Mac mini Apple M1 Chip with 8‑Core CPU and 8‑Core GPU​

$1,439.00

Originally released November 2020
16GB unified memory
2TB SSD1
Two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports
Gigabit Ethernet port

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Be sure that you have "real need" for the 2tb SSD before you spend too much $$$ for it.

If you're going to use it to store copies of movies on, or even music, well... that's just as easily done on cheaper external drives.

 

[Wingsley]

I went ahead and bought the refurbished Mac Mini with the specifications posted earlier. I wanted 2 TB SSD for a couple of reasons: (1: I do occasional video work, and I wanted additional on-board storage in case I wanted large projects stored on-board; and (2: in the future, I may want to install Parallels with Windows for ARM. With only 16 GB of RAM, if I launched Parallels and Windows 10, I wouldn't have any Mac apps open at the time. But I wanted to be able to run Microsoft Access or Publisher or some Windows-only GIS applications.

The refurb Mac Mini was considerably discounted for having the super-sized SSD on-board. I must've saved about $350. I could not pass that up.

 

[Wingsley]

Perhaps the prudent move would be to settle into your new living situation before making any purchases. For one, it will give you time to evaluate your true needs based on actual usage.

I'm making the assumption here that you will be working from home in the same residence as your elderly parents. Depending on their state of health, you may find yourself in a full-time caregiver situation, which severely hampers your ability to do much else. Will you be taking them to appointments, refilling prescriptions, dealing with physical therapy, shopping, cooking... etc? All these things weigh heavily on your ability to work from home. For some, it really is not possible to do both (be a caregiver and work from home). Many additional distractions come into play. In essence, a caregiver is a full-time job.

I say this with all honesty as I have taken a leave of absence from work to care for my mother who had suffered a stroke. My employers offered me the opportunity to work from home. As it turned out, every waking moment was spent caring for my mother. There literally was no time to do much else. Your situation may be different, but the reality is, if they can no longer care for themselves, you are now going to be doing all the things that they can no longer do for themselves on top of everything else you need to do for yourself. After about 3 months it was clear that I could not possibly return to work unless I moved her into assisted living. Nor could I work from home in any capacity due to the constant need for supervision and care. At my age, returning to the workforce, say after a 10 year hiatus would have been financial suicide. You have to consider your own well-being in the long term because this is a long term type of commitment.

BTW: sorry to hear about what you went through. That must've been terrible.

 

[Boyd01]

But I wanted to be able to run Microsoft Access or Publisher or some Windows-only GIS applications.

FWIW, I'm a heavy user of GlobalMapper 23 - a Windows-only GIS application - in Windows 10 under Parallels on my 2018 i7/64gb/2tb Mini. Works very well for the kind of work I do, it is much faster than my old HP Windows 7 desktop. However, I run it in a 4-core/32gb VM while running several Mac Apps at the same time. Just for fun, I tried to install the arcGIS free trial on Windows 10 under Parallels, but their compatibility checker said the internal UHD 630 GPU wasn't compatible.

Would be interesting to see how these apps run under Parallels on Apple Silicon. Personally, I would not go that route until there's an "official" way to run a licensed copy of Windows.

If you're doing much with GIS, you can never have enough disk space. I would have purchased a 4tb or even larger if it had been available on the Mini. I always have a 2tb external Samsung T7 plugged in and still need to do constant "house cleaning" to keep both disks from filling up. I also do some work with video.

 

[Wingsley]

If I do any GIS at all, it will be a rare, occasional thing. I am a volunteer for a local recreational trails organization and doing GIS mapping may come in handy there.