Yes you can do that. I'm doing that right now. 24" external monitor and blank laptop screen (due to dead Nvidia card). You just have to get into cmos and activate the external pcie as primary display.

A little update on my situation. My T61's internal vidcard fried (nvidia 140m) earlier this year. But my advanced dock with the external video card in the pcie slot saved my laptop, now it's a desktop. (look at thread for what I did).

I'm still using my T61 as a desktop now, instead of a laptop. I'm running windows 8. Everything is great!
Bought a used T400 as a portable option. My T61 is nearing 5 years old and everything seems fine, but perhaps the fan needs a change or the HDD. I know that my kids (in the future) will be using this "desktop" setup! I hope it lasts another 5 years!!!!

Best of luck guys!

Don't rule out a planar replacement. You could return that T61 to true form, you know.

Did it burn out or loose connection?
I succesfully revived (reflowed) a GPU a few months ago using a simple lightbulb (heating the chip with direct contact for 15min (( a lightbulb gets HOT!))

GL

On a side note - I managed to convince y electrician to cover the cost of a new used dock since he had screwed up the ground phase, and I am now again enjoying the benefit of a T61 + external GPU.
My new dock is unmodded and gosh, it is so loud... In the wake of my last dock burning out I am less inclined to open the new one up, even just to disconnect the Pci-e fan - any argument against simply cutting the wires?
Furthermore, the Pci-e fan seems to react on the powerdraw of the Pci-e slot, sure would be nice if there was a way to control or "trick" is without disconnecting it.

This won't actually fix the problem, but since you mentioned using a lightbulb, I'll use this analogy. I've sure we all have seen a lightbulb blow out and if you tap on it you can move the broken filiment enough to temporarily make contact and it lights up again... usually only until it's tapped again, or turned off. By heating your chip you managed to move the microscopic circuits just enough to make contact over a fracture. The heat expands the materials and will often appear to fix the problem, but it's no more fixed then the lightbulb in this analogy.

Reflowing was used to fix problems when the solder joints under the chip cracked and heating them up would actually fix the problem. These cracks were caused by flexing of the laptops frame/board, but the T61 doesn't suffer this flexing so it would be highly unusual for a chip to become detached, but it is somewhat common for the chip to fail.

Everyone who has done this type of repair soon realizes it's not fixed, the only proper solution is replacing the board, since there are no reliable chips available to repair them.

The DIY reflowing I did was indeed on a laptop suffering from the "flex" problem and it has been running great ever since. Suggesting this "fix" was not meant as any kind of expert advice, was merely throwing the idea out there

In regards to the dock, I just disconnected the Pci-e slot fan and realized that I had forgotten how much noise the PSU fan makes (my old dock was modded with a resistor on the fan for lower RPM)

I am just learning as I go along so this might be a stupid question:
what would the electrical implications be of simply obstructing the PSU fan without disconnecting it?
( I know of ppl who do this from time to time, but it always struck me as somewhat .. dodgy

little feedback after 1+ year of usage of advanced dock with hd6570 (windows 7 x86), on a philips 16:10, 1600x1200 monitor:
-nevewinter nights (1) runs perfectly with max settings on full resolution (obviously, this is a rather old game)
-team fortress 2: i have to run it on lowest settings (if using directx 9, i have read somewhere that directx 8 may give better performance) and on a resolution of 1280×800 - maily because it is a multiplayer game
-diablo 3 runs at full resolution but with minimal graphical settings
-minecraft without mods has no problem running smoothly
-darksiders (1) runs at full resolution with minimal settings mostly smoothly (some minor slowdowns but overall its enjoyable)
-the hidden (hl-2 source mod) runs at max resolution with minimal settings - mainly because the maps are a bit simpler than in team fortress 2 and the gameplay is not that fast paced
-older games like first red faction have absolutely no problem running at full resolution with max settings (there are games that have community-made paches that can enable previously unavailable resolutions and settings, but they cause no slowdown)
-deus ex - human revolution runs on max resolution with minimal settings, it should be noted tho that i played the game very stealthy so gameplay was mostly smooth, but i had to reduce resolution one time because of the direct confrontation there was a lot of action and smoke, and i had to move fast
-arma 2 (with day z mod) - max resolution - medium-low settings

i have to note that there is some ridiculously slowdown in the window manager of windows 7, it is not consistent but sometimes clicking on the file menu in vs2010 or opening a new tab in firefox/chrome can take 2-3 seconds

Whats you other specs, mate? I'm considering buying a dock for my R61 (T8100/4GB/Intel). Also, have you tried anyting faster in the dock? HD6570 isn't a high performing card by any stretch of the imagination.

T60p with firegl v5250, 2 gigs of ram, core 2 duo t7400 (if i recall correctly) ~250 gigs hd
i have tried other cards (read a bit further back in the thread)
i don't think you can/should put any better card in the dock for 2 reasons:
-performance bottleneck of the 1x (http://www.blasterzone.ro/wp-content/up ... -slots.gif) pci express
-wattage limit (http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... MIGR-68839) of 50

also be careful with the dock as i had one that said no "lenovo" on the sticker with the instruction images, it only worked with a radeon x550, then i had to buy a lenovo one to get this card working
see difference:
-ibm one(probably older): http://www.abload.de/img/len_kieg_advanced_docytr5e.jpg
-lenovo one: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z6bR633Ju3I/T ... BVorne.jpg

Alright, thanks for the heads up. With all the gfx cards I have, I figured I'd try 'em all until I found one that works. Also, I'm not completely unfamiliar with a dremel. The wattage shouldn't be an issue, a PicoPSU doesn't take much room and supplies 150-180 watts.

Also, where did you buy your dock, mate? Do you have a hungarian source or did you buy it straight from Lenovo?

bought it from ebay from germany.
my advice is to look regularly (read: daily) on ebay for offers and you can consider yourself lucky if you can get one around 100-120 euros
after some time they should show up

Dang, I was hoping to pick one up when I'm home next month. Thanks anyway. I'd better brush up on my german then...

I have now located an advanced dock (39T4569) and on delivery, I will attempt to use eGPU/ViDock techniques to clone the pci-e output to the internal LCD. Either via the ultramon solution or with an screen capture software and LCD controller.

A the moment, the gfx cards I will test (w/ or w/o external solutions) are: Radeon HD3450, HD4850, HD5770, HD6970, Geforce 8400ES, 8600GT and 660Ti. These are all cards I have at home for the moment.

Unfortunately, my riser hasnt arrived yet, but my dock did. I immediately installed a HD3450 and a GF 8400GS, and neither works. Just get the long short short beep core. I'm so *****Expletives removed by Moderator***** right now that i cant describe it...