Are all VGA cables the same?

[LuminaryJanitor]

Just bought a replacement VGA cable (previous owner of the last one sawed the screws off...), and it doesn't work - monitor says "no signal". Comes back to life when I put the old one back in. FWIW, the old one is missing pin 9, and the new one has all 15, but I didn't think that made a difference...

Any chance that this is a compatibility issue? Or is the new one just dead?

 

[Elledan]

As far as I know it shouldn't make a difference, no. It might just have been a defective cable. You could check a VGA pin-out to see what this missing pin does.

 

[LuminaryJanitor]

The missing pin on the old one is a +5V DC line (apparently to allow plug-and-play detection of devices when they're not powered up).