T42 w/ Dock II - PCI Slot not working? Can't add any cards..

[sghammond]

I don't have any experience with the Thinkpad Dock II to fall back on – so I am hoping someone can tell me if what I am experiencing is just 'normal' behavior. Right now I am leaning towards a bad PCI slot or maybe an issue with the PCI bridge to the Dock.

I just bought a Dock II last week specifically to try and use an old sound card from my outdated desktop. The card is an Event Echo Gina 20 (circa 1997). I installed the card, attached my T42, booted, and nothing happened. I am running WinXP sp3.

I then added the drivers to the system after which I went the route of “add new hardware” and got the “This device cannot start. (Code 10)” error.

Assuming the card may not be compatible, I decided to try a couple different cards to find out if they could be added, or at least behave differently with XP seeing them and trying to load drivers after a boot up.

Additional cards that I have tried:
Stratitec IC1394 3-PORT Pci Firewire Adapter Card
Creative SoundBlaster 16PCI (CT4740 )
Blitzz Technology BWI715 Super G 802.11g/b Wireless Adapter
Diamond Fireport 40 SCSI UW
(I would try more – but this is all the PCI cards I have lying around the house)

Not one of these cards were seen by XP when booting up. I tied the “add new hardware” process with the SoundBlaster but got the same 'Code 10' error.

After this I tried to get XP to see the Gina sound card again by putting it back in the slot and attaching the T42 to the Dock and doing a clean install of XP while attached. Still nothing – no instance of the card in Device Manager after XP finished.

I know not all cards work with the Dock II – but one would think I would have gotten further than this. Is it possible the PCI slot is simply bad? Has anyone struggled this much when adding to the PCI slot? What should actually happen on screen after booting up with a new card (shouldn't XP see the new hardware and try to install drivers)?

Any help or wisdom would be much appreciated – at this point I may just buy another Dock to compare.

Thanks in advance,
Stephen

[sjthinkpader]

The PCI clot is bus to the main dock MB by two flex circuits. Make sure these are in the connectors correctly.

[sghammond]

Thanks Thinkpadder...you were right.

The ribbon cable splits into two and goes to two separate plugs. Both were inserted into the plugs, but one of them did not have the little retaining bar pressed down. I pressed it down - rebooted - and...That's all it took. Fixed and working!

Many thanks,

sghammond