How to get dual monitor support on the Thinkpad Dock II?

[DentdHalo]

Im thinking the Matrox P650 dual head low profile PCI card, installed into the Thinkpad Dock II.

Has anyone done it?

This is the configuration I want:

When the T42p is connected to the Dock II docking station, the docking station will have the Matrox graphics card with two DVI connectors plugged into two LCD monitors of my choice. When mounted, and the laptop is turned on, the dual monitors will be the default display

Will that allow me to have proper dual monitor display?

Or...

What about just a regular single head low profile PCI video card, and then using the onboard ATi video (when passed through to the ThinkPad Dock II connector) to provide dual monitor support. Would that work too?

Basically I need dual monitor support and the matrox card solution looked interesting.

for those interested, here is matrox' web site with info on that card.



http://www.matrox.com/mga/workstation/a ... rofile.cfm

[DentdHalo]

bump.

anyone doing dual monitor with a T42???

[BillMorrow]

bump.

anyone doing dual monitor with a T42???

dual monitor including the thinkpad display..??
if YES, then yes..
if NO, then i've never heard of anyone doing this..

[Nebelfelsen]

I have bought a Matrox Millenium G450 dual head with 1x DVI-out and 1x VGA-out (HD-Sub-PIN) and put it in an IBM Dock II.

There was no problem to use this solution together with 2x IBM P275 21inch screen, although it is not possible to run both screens with 1600x1200dpi if you need 85Hz AND 32bit. The maximum I got from the 32MB Matrox-card where 1600x1200dpi,24bit and 84HZ on the first and 85Hz on the second screen.

Has the Matrox 650 more RAM and is is also a normal PCI-card (no PCI-Express or something like that?) How much does it cost? I've bought a new G450 for less then 80 $ and a second (for the dock at work) for just 15$ on eBay. I think other Matrox cards costs quite more than the G450?

I have tested the dual screen environment with the following thinkpads:
- IBM X20 Type 2662-xxx
- IBM A31 Type 2652-xxx

It worked fine but with the X20 a bit slow. The X20 had also problems to view the IBM Active Desktop (Active Think Theme) and broke down (with the internal display the Active Think Theme worked fine). After deactivating everything was OK.
The A31 made some problems while viewing videos on Windows Media Player (which I haven't done on the X20). The videos could be shown but Windows took a long time to react to mouse clicks (stop/pause of the video or changing the volume took several minutes); perhaps this problem can be solved by changing the windows hardware acceleration.

While connected to the dock with the Matrox-card in it, the internal graphic card is deactivated. So you can't use a third screen and there might be problems when you want to dock/undock the system while it is powered on (you should first shut down windows and then dock/undock the system).