Attending The Dayton Hamvention one rainy May Afternoon I stumbled across a carton FULL of new 6' DVI cables. I asked the proprietor how much for the rain soaked cables. He said $2.50 each. I thought to myself these are $50 new (at the time). In short I only bought two. BUT...

I was to find out they were not DVI cables but IBM KVM cables too many pins!(3x10 not 3X8) and the shielding on one end is upside down. Feeling heart broken and kind of swindled. I threw the cables in my junk box for a later project.

A couple years later I built a new rig with a new video card (Nivdia GTX 670) which was able to support at least three screen spanning.:) That Black Friday I found three Dell 24" monitors(E2414hx) for $99 each for my rig. The Only problem with the monitors no HDMI inputs just DVI-D and VGA.

Step 1: You Can Do Almost Anything With a Dremmel, Even Electronics!

Being excited I did not want to wait to connect my new monitors. My video card has four ports 1-DVI-D, 1-DVI-I, 1-HDMI, 1-Display Port. I had one HDMI to DVI-D adaptor and one DVI-D cable from my old rig. I needed one more DVI-D cable.

So remembering the two KVM cords I had in my junk box, I thought I would give it a try.

DVI cables are straight through cables so each end is the same pinout. so, with a quick continuity check I verified there are no crossovers in the IBM KVM cable. Dremel Time!

The white "IN" end of the cord I cut the shielding and 2 rows of three pins with a Dremel and a cutoff wheel.

The Black "OUT" end I did the same, but since my monitor only was DVI-D I removed also the four pins around the ground blade. If your monitor has a DVI-I socket you do not have to remove these.

I was concerned that the inverted shielding on the connector would cause a problem but the connectors seem to meet up without any extra force on the connector at all. Plus you can still screw down one side of the connector...Bonus!

I realize this hack might be out of its time and DVI cables are now MUCH cheaper, but if you have it use it. A Ten minute hack. Plus it is a hack you could literally do with a hack saw.;)