Port Replicator II & minor T40 annoyances

[data_ho]

Hey all,
I just bought a Port Replicator II for my T40, and I had two questions about it:

First, the analog VGA passthru is quite poor and makes my monitor blurry at resolutions beyond 1024 compared to directly connecting it - am I the only one having this problem? I understand the problem with analog connections and how they degrade, but i'm just wondering if my problem is abnormal. FYI: I'm connected to Iiyama Vision Master Pro 510 with a BNC connection, so its not that

Second, the audio connection is also poor - the port replicator apparently amplifies and distorts the sounds, so my headphones sound like crap when I dock. Again, is this abnormal or to be expected?

I purchased the port replicator from Tiger Direct, who had it for $49 (obviously an excellent deal). Unfortunately, when i got it I found it was a used model, and the plastic around the left side, next to the notebook (in front of the power connector nearer to the notebook) was a bit melted - making me a bit wary about using it. Thus far it has been fine, but I'm wondering if my problems are related to it being a used model, or just the nature of the beast.

As for my T40 (undocked or docked), it sometimes slows down so that every character of text comes out incredibly slowly. This happens for about 5 seconds, then returns to normal. On a desktop, I would probably diagnose this as an IRQ conflict, but I'm not well versed enough in thinkpads to know if this is the case. It's been doing it once in a while since I got the T40 new. Anyone else experience this? I'm thinking it'll resolve itself when I reinstall on a new 7k60 tho

Finally, I had to remove the plastic PC Card cover since the metal spring got out of alignment, despite my best efforts to fix it. Anyone know an easy way to fix this? I just leave it off, but having a gaping hole in the notebook isn't all that fancy. I never use PC Cards, so a dell-like empty plastic card would do just fine if they made them.

Thanks in advance, and thanks to Bill for such a great resource this place is.

-Nick

P.S. Looking for a nice cheap working 701C for nostalgia's sake and for some old games. Anyone got one they dont need?

[geekman686]

I have a T40 and had the same problem with the pause entering text. I found the problem was the IBM keyboard customizer program. If you search google or some other search engine, you will find this is a common problem.

I just un-installed the keyboard customizer program and eveything is good! No lag what so ever.

[snife]

The VGA port thing i have seen before and is pretty standard (but seems to be a lot worse on some monitors and quite usable on others). The audio problem i have not seen but im concerned by you saying your using headphones - the port on the port replicator is line-out and not a standard headphone jack so should only really be used with an amplified set of speakers/headphones (ones with their own power source). I agree about uninstalling keyboard customiser for your keyboard problem - i think there is going to be a fix for this soon though so keep an eye out on the driver matrix for a future version if you like having the tool. I have never seen the port replicators melting at all though so i would get this checked out if i were you.