We don’t always have exactly the right cable or connector, but we might have a handy adapter or converter. In this video, you’ll learn about converting or adapting DVI to HDMI, DVI, to VGA, USB to Ethernet, USB-C to USB-A, or using one of the many interfaces on a USB hub.
In your IT career, you will have many instances where you need a certain type of cable, but you don’t have that exact cable in your toolbag. However, there may be ways to put multiple devices, cables, and adapters together to create the type of interface you need.
Sometimes these connections are electrically compatible with each other and you simply need a cable that has one type of connector on one side and another type of connector on the other. But occasionally, you’ll need to convert from one format to another, so there may be some additional processing that occurs or power that’s required to facilitate that process.
Most of these adapters and converters are designed for temporary use, although sometimes they do turn into more of a permanent connection.
When we were moving from DVI connections to HDMI, we tended to use a lot of DVI-to-HDMI cables or DVI-to-HDMI adapters. This is because DVI-D, the digital version of DVI, and HDMI, which is also a digital standard, are electrically compatible with each other.
So you can connect one end of the cable to DVI-D, the other end of the cable to HDMI, and you’d be able to send that video signal from one device to the other without any type of signal conversion.
The DVI-to-HDMI converter is very similar to the cable. It’s much smaller, of course, but it does provide a way to convert from one format to the other. Another useful backwards compatibility is between DVI-A, the analog version of DVI, and VGA.
Both of those two signal types will work with each other, although technically, only 640-by-480 resolution is officially supported. But since they are both analog connections, you might just need a simple adapter to change from the VGA 15-pin connector to the larger DVI connection.
If you’re moving from the analog VGA connection to a digital version of DVI, then you will need some type of signal conversion to be able to convert between those two formats. But in a pinch, these types of converters can come in handy, especially when you just need to make a quick change between one video standard and another.
If you have a newer laptop, one of the things you might notice is that those laptops are getting thinner and thinner, and suddenly, we’ve now realized there’s not enough space to put a full-sized RJ45 ethernet connection on our newer laptops. But in many cases, we still need wired connectivity to be able to connect to other devices. This means you might need some type of adapter or converter that can change USB connectivity into an ethernet connection.
If you don’t want to rely on wireless connectivity everywhere you go, or you might need wired connectivity to directly connect to a device or to perform network troubleshooting, then having one of these converters in your bag can be very useful.
Another challenge you might run into is that many of these laptops no longer have the larger USB-A -type connectors. For that reason, we might need another type of adapter that’s able to convert from USB-C to USB-A that would then allow us to plug in a USB-A peripheral.
Sometimes these are longer cables, so can move them away from that smaller interface on the laptop itself, or it might be a simple adapter that you plug in that would give you access to a USB-A connection.
And if you’re not sure exactly what type of connector you might need, or you just like to be planning for any particular contingency, you might want to get a USB hub. This plugs into your laptop over a USB connection and provides a number of different outputs on the USB hub itself. This particular hub supports USB, SD memory connectors, HDMI, ethernet, and other types of connections.