Thinkpads Forum

I am using 3 dvi screens, no need for Catalyst Control as windows handles this natively OK. Catalyst Control Panel is only needed for rotating the screens.

mj

Nobody wanting to experiment a bit to put his/her X60 on an Advanced Dock and see if it works ?

Thanks Thesp.

I feel much better now.

Sepehr

Has any one tried a non-graphics PCIe card in this?

Other cards in the dock:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... light=pcie
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... light=pcie

best,

Mark

Hi I am sorry if this has already been answered but I was wondering for those individuals who have purchased the advanced dock from Lenovo, do you know whether or not any power cables were shipped with the product? I just checked inside the box and there is no cable.

Thanks!!!

The Advanced Dock should have come with a power cord. If it didn't, that was a mistake.

RonS wrote:

Thesp wrote:Catalyst Control Panel cannot be loaded - causes crash on boot. I think this is due to there being different Catalysts for the FireGL series and the Radeon series.

That's why I have an NVidia card in my dock, so its drivers don't conflict with ATI's.

With this setup, I have three external 24" monitors (1920x1200 DVI) , plus the Thinkpad's 15" monitor.

Ron, which model NVidia card do you have in your dock?

Did you have to make any modifications to get it to fit?

Do you know if it runs reliably with Vista?

NVidia GeForce 7600GS. I've also used others as dicussed previously in this thread.

I've read both that the XFX NVidia GeForce 7600GT should fit in the Advanced Dock, and also that it doesn't fit at all.

Can someone confirm that the 7600GT fits or doesn't fit?

I'm planning to order the 7600GS if the 7600GT doesn't fit.

correct me if i'm wrong, but what you describe are chipsets not the actual form factor of the card. the from factor that fits in the dock is half length, full height. without an oversized cooling fan.

If you provide an actual link to the card, I can probably tell from a picture whether it will fit or not.

For the way I work, I like a silent computer system. That's why I chose a card with a heatsink rather than a fan, and disconnected the Dock's internal fans. By doing so, I may well have inadvertantly lowered the power requirements enough to have have a stable solid system. Some others who have tried putting video cards in the Advanced Dock have had problems that may be related to too much power draw.

RonS wrote:If you provide an actual link to the card, I can probably tell from a picture whether it will fit or not.

Here is the product page on Newegg for the 7600GT from XFX:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150185

Just from comparing it with the XFX's 7600 GS, I'd say they look pretty similar as far as form goes... in your best opinion, do you think it'll fit?

No, I don't think it will fit. Compare is closely with the image of this card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814195013

It appears the the XFX card is a few millimeters wider. I have some cards that are that size and they don't fit in the dock, but by just a tiny bit. I've been tempted to get a sanding wheel and shave off a mm or so...

RonS wrote:NVidia GeForce 7600GS. I've also used others as dicussed previously in this thread.

Which BRAND of NVidia do you mean? XFX?
Can you provide a link to it on Newegg?

I just got an XFX 8500 card from Newegg after lots of research (thinking it would fit as the published specs show it would). But, it doesn't fit because the onboard fan assembly is too thick for the card to fully seat in the slot. I'm wondering which EXACT model of 7600GS you have so that I can get one that is proven to work.

Thanks in advance!

sry if this was mentioned but is anyone running vista and mulitple monitors with the two graphics cards?

atyrrrell wrote:sry if this was mentioned but is anyone running vista and mulitple monitors with the two graphics cards?

There's a thread in the Vista area on that topic:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=44564

DigitalFoundry wrote:Has any one tried a non-graphics PCIe card in this?

I'm using a PCIe-IEEE1394-card in the dock. Works okay except that there's no hotplugging. I actually have to boot the TP in the dock to get the card working.

At first I thought that was a Linux-problem, but it doesn't hotswap under Windows XP either.

It's not that problematic though, since I only need FW at home. But having to boot to get it to work sucks since Suspend2Disk is quite useless for me...

The good news: It fits and it's recognized, drivers loaded etc.

The bad news: Device manager not happy: "Failed to load" and/or "Service failed to start".

The config: T61P, onboard nVidia Quad FX 570M, XP Pro

The comments/questions:
1) Is there any way to get further diag info from Windows? I cheked the event logs in Admin Tools, but nothing there.

I went with a GeForce card because I thought it best to "keep it in the family" with the on-board nVidia.

2) Was this a bad assumption?

I'm on the latest BIOS and I've tried every combination of primary display: PCIe and built-in.

* When set to PCIe, the device manager shows only the unhappy 8400GS and the resolution on my external display is stuck on low. Attempted changes are rejected.

* When set to internal, the device manager shows a happy internal FX570 and the unhappy 8400GS. Same stuck on low resolution on external display.

3) Any ideas before I try the matrox card?

Thanks in advance,
Barry

p.s. I've read about 10 forum threads here and elsewhere. Forgive me if I've missed something pertinant that's been already posted.

TP_anon,

What operating system are you using?

RonS wrote:TP_anon,

What operating system are you using?

XP Pro

I would try this:

1. Set the BIOS to boot to the internal video adapter
2. Boot into safe mode and uninstall the 8400 drivers.
3. Reboot back into safe mode, and install the 8400 drivers. You might check out laptopvideo2go.com for alternative drivers.

Hi Ron, thanks for the reply.

I'll give this a try. In the meantime I've ordered the new Matrox P690. Even if I can get the 8400GS to work, the P690 seems a better choice due to:

1) Much lower power (a well-noted limitation w/ the dock)
2) Heat sink vs fan (a card fan combined with the dock fan produces quite a rumble, also widely noted).
3) Dual DVI (XFX recently revved their 8400GS card to be one DVI plus one VGA).

Anyways, thanks again for taking the time to help out us newbies!

Hello, has Advanced dock limited brandwitch if I put eSata PCIex1 card to it? I mean HDD > eSata PCIe > dock > T60. I read that HDD in ultrabay is limited to 34 MB/s.
Thanks

commander wrote:Hello, has Advanced dock limited brandwitch if I put eSata PCIex1 card to it? I mean HDD > eSata PCIe > dock > T60. I read that HDD in ultrabay is limited to 34 MB/s.
Thanks

Apparently, yes. The fastest I"ve transferred data to/from any device on the Advanced Dock is around 34 MB/sec.

RonS wrote:

commander wrote:Hello, has Advanced dock limited brandwitch if I put eSata PCIex1 card to it? I mean HDD > eSata PCIe > dock > T60. I read that HDD in ultrabay is limited to 34 MB/s.
Thanks

Apparently, yes. The fastest I"ve transferred data to/from any device on the Advanced Dock is around 34 MB/sec.

This is so useless

I really regret, that I bought IBM. If I bought HP, I would buy their 3in1 dock with 3.5" HDD inside. Damm Flexview

I use a PCMCIA Firewire card on my Thinkpad and get 64-65MB/sec from a LaCie firewire drive. You may be able to do even better with an ExpressCard.

The Thinkpad supports a second hard drive in the SlimBay (remove the CD Drive) which does not have the bandwidth limitation of the dock. You can put the CD drive in the dock instead.

The Advanced Dock has a slot for a PCI Express card (commonly used for an add-on video card) that, from what I can tell, HP doesn't offer.

The dock's 34MB/speed limit shows itself during benchmarks, but in my real-world use of the dock, it's rarely noticable.

Success!

I finally received my Matrox "P690 Plus LP PCIe x16" from Fedex today. To summarize, I have a 2-week old T61P, running XP Pro, with internal nVidia Quadro FX 570M. I have two external 22" LCD monitors and my goal is to use these in conjunction with the laptop LCD (and reserve the laptop's external display connection for a fourth display should I want one). I initially thought that using an nVidia-based PCIe card in the advanced dock would make life easier, I called XFX, found one that fit (8400GS), but was unable to get it to work and ended up returning it. After reading this and other forum threads, I decided to give Matrox a try.

I was all set to order the P650 but noticed on the Matrox site an announcement for the P690. I was drawn to this for a few reasons: Low power (10-11 Watts), heat sink instead of fan (noise factor), and an available 256MB version (the 690 "Plus").

I followed the matrox white paper instructions, but was immediately foiled. With the laptop BIOS set to use the external PCIe as the primary display, it wouldn't boot at all while docked. It emitted some kind of failure code, one long beep followed by two short beeps. No display or hard disk activity at all. I played around with reseating the card, disconnecting the monitors, switching BIOS boot displays, etc, all to no avail.

Eventually, dissapointed and bitter and determined I was going to return everything, laptop included, I switched back to internal LCD as both primary and boot display, but left it docked. It booted and low-and-behold, the device manager came up with new hardware, a generic VGA display adapter. I was suspicious that it had refound the internal nVidia display, but a quick check into the device manager indicated that no, this was an additional display adapter.

Again following the matrox instructions, I cancelled the driver install and executed the matrox software setup. Then rebooted. Checked the device manager and it was happily presenting both display adapters. So I went to display properties, attached all the monitors, and viola, success.

Another note: with XP managing the multiple displays, I was limited to 1280X1024 for the externals (1680X1050 for the laptop display). Switching to Matrox's display manager, I was limited to 1600x1200 for the externals (not-widescreen compatible). I had to set Matrox's "Mode Source" to "PowerRes Mode" to gain access to 1680X1050 for the externals, which is their native resolution (newer 22" LCDs).

RonS wrote:I use a PCMCIA Firewire card on my Thinkpad and get 64-65MB/sec from a LaCie firewire drive. You may be able to do even better with an ExpressCard.

Thats good result, but it must be annoying that you have to plug any cable to ThinkPad every time you dock it. In fact in my case I shoud have a cable with ExpressCard on the desk, and this thing connect every time...

The Thinkpad supports a second hard drive in the SlimBay (remove the CD Drive) which does not have the bandwidth limitation of the dock. You can put the CD drive in the dock instead.

Yes, but I cannot plug 500+GB 3.5" drive, which I have.

The dock's 34MB/speed limit shows itself during benchmarks, but in my real-world use of the dock, it's rarely noticable.

I am afraid of, because I will have connected about 5 devices all the time (mice, Keyboard, microphone, sound card, LCD, camera) and HDD. The bottleneck seems dangerously for me. In the second case, I need some card like this

commander wrote:Yes, but I cannot plug 500+GB 3.5" drive, which I have.

Why did you bother to buy any laptop rather than a desktop?!?