[Blakhawkg3]

I recently moved my Beige G3 to another room on to another desk. Soon after I moved it, I realized that my monitor cable was too short and would not reach my CPU. I rushed off to Best Buy to try to find a VGA extension cable and found a 6 foot one. (my monitor cable is permanently attached to the monitor)
After I attached the cable and started up, I noticed that everything on my screen had a transparent "ghost" of itself right next to it. I tried degaussing the monitor but nothing happened (I have no idea what this does, but I heard it helped in some cases). The cable is a Belkin 6-foot VGA extension cable. Does Apple or some other company make a cable that works well? Or is this what I get for trying to get more space...
My monitor is a 17 inch Multiple Scan display from Apple, and was fine until I moved it. It is connected to a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI card via a Mac-VGA adapter from Apple.

sounds like you are suffering from signal quality problems. Most likely, the monitor needs more juice from the video card than be safely delivered via the extension cable. Large monitors (17" and up) often can't have their cables extended without a loss in signal quality...

I agree with datapusher. I have a larger monitor and the same happened with an el-cheapo switchbox. Most of the problems deal with shielding. You might try a mutli-shielded cable, but I doubt seriously that it will have any effect. Another possibility is a VGA amplifier from a company like Black Box or something. They can be expensive though. The solution that worked for me is a Belkin Omnicube keyboard/video/monitor switch. It provides good shielding and an electronic buffer/amplifier which helped knock out the ghosts. It's working quite well with a 10' quad-shielded extension cable.

[Blakhawkg3]

Thanks for the responses.


Do you think a shorter (3') VGA extension would take away the ghosts or at least reduce them a bit?

-Blakhawkg3

The ghosting is because the cable is of poor quality (bad impedance
match, or variable impedance) which produces reflections of the signal
from one end of the cable to the other. Return the cable and get
your money back. The best extension cables for monitors are made and
sold by Griffin Technology in Tennesee.