BeagleBone Black Display

BeagleBone Black is a nice little board, but mine came with no HDMI display: the monitor could not detect a HDMI signal.  I tried different monitors and cables with same result.  I researched online and tried different versions of software distribution, but no luck.  Although it is not essential to have the HDMI display, it is a little upsetting to miss this feature.  As my frustration grew, I read someone wrote that his problem was with the micro HDMI connector.  With naked eye, there did not seem anything wrong.  When I looked under a microscope, I noticed that one pin might not solder correctly.  I quickly verified the broken continuity.  After slight touchup with a fine solder tip under a microscope, the HDMI display miraculous started to work.  It turned out that Pin 19 (+5V) was loose.  Now it works nicely on an HDTV with 1920x1080 resolution (24Hz).  The connector certainly did not come to my mind as the possible problem; people have mentioned about bad cables, but not the connector.  In my experience, the interconnect contributes to the most hardware problems and should be the first thing to check.  But in this case, the potential software issue seemed to loom large.

On a related one, when using a monitor, the software synergy is very useful for sharing keyboard and mouse.