I did think about kits, however the costliest part is the chip so I am not sure I could reduce the total cost by much. I have also had problems in the past with people incorrectly assembling kits that I sold so in general I am opposed to the idea.
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You can plug a VGA monitor directly in. However that monitor must support 15khz. There are many multisync monitors and that is what it is designed for. It does NOT do scandoubling at all and will not work on the majority of normal VGA only monitors.
I have a BenQ that works with 15khz and plugs straight in.
Unless your monitor can accept 15khz in on the VGA plug you will need something like the gonbes in the middle.
You also need to make sure that pin 9 is not shorted to ground (as some cheap cables do) because 5v is placed on that pin in the VGA port. This was part of the later VGA "standard", pin 9 was originally a 'key' pin and then changed to 5v. best to check that pin 9 is not shorted to ground before plugging things in.