Buying an LCD monitor with no digital input was always a bad way to cut costs, but you can buy active DVI-to-VGA or DisplayPort-to-VGA adapters to keep these de

Buying an LCD monitor with no digital input was always a bad way to cut costs, but you can buy active DVI-to-VGA or DisplayPort-to-VGA adapters to keep these devices working with new hardware. Moving rarely-used DAC hardware to an external dongle seems like a good design decision, though it makes more sense for driving a CRT, where the conversion is D->A rather than D->A->D->A. A CRT can be better than a modern LCD in some ways, whereas VGA-input LCDs are simply obsolete.