Gio Monitors

in the settings from the start menu, have you actived your external display (move the icon from the top to one cel near the ohter actives screens) ?

my other external display (the DVI native display) is working fine, my question was more if others were having difficulties connecting VGA displays specifically, if they had found a specific DVI to VGA adapter that had worked for them

We have two DVI to VGA adapters here on the bench that we use with a Gio.

They have the pins for DVI dual link -- the one I have in my hand is an ATI 6140007200G.

Thank you Hans, I am up and running, what was happening was I was enabling the display but with a resolution too large seemingly, beyond the capacity of the display.  Once I enabled the display and turned down the resolution before pressing accept the console found the monitor.  I guess I was expecting the resolution to establish itself based on the monitor.  I am happily working :)

Dual and single-link is irrelevant for the analogue VGA signal, the only pins that matter for VGA are the fours pins and the "cross" at one end.

- If you look closely you'll see that these pins aren't there on DVI-D connectors like on Ion/Element.

Some VGA monitors can announce which resolutions they support.
Unfortunately not all of them do so on those you'll get the complete list that the graphics card is capable of - almost certainly including resolutions too high (and maybe even too low) for your monitor.

Dual and single-link is irrelevant for the analogue VGA signal, the only pins that matter for VGA are the fours pins and the "cross" at one end.

- If you look closely you'll see that these pins aren't there on DVI-D connectors like on Ion/Element.

Some VGA monitors can announce which resolutions they support.
Unfortunately not all of them do so on those you'll get the complete list that the graphics card is capable of - almost certainly including resolutions too high (and maybe even too low) for your monitor.