How do you get 2 external displays and the lcd to work?

[armorsmith]

I have a dvi and vga monitor set up for CAD work. I'm using the presentation director but it says I can't have two external monitors in an extended desktop setting with my T60p lcd! Is there any way to get my lcd, and two monitors to all work together so I can have an individual picture on eachdisplay?

Thanks!
-A

[Cassirer]

Thnkvantage ... selected presentation director ... choose

[kwramm]

does that mean going triple-headed works? internal lcd + dvi out + vga out?

I guess this means two external monitors without the internal LCD, vga ou+ dvi out work as well? this is what I need for 3D work when docking my not yet arrived t60p. However triple head setup would be ultra sweet to have.

[RonS]

The Thinkpad alone can drive two displays (built-in LCD plus the VGA). In order to get a third display, you need to install another graphics adapter.

The best way to do this is to get an Advanced Dock. The dock alone upgrades the VGA connector to DVI. You can also install a graphics card in the dock. Depending on what graphics card you choose (must be PCI-Express), you can drive up to four additional displays, VGA or DVI. There are several threads on this T60 forum that discusses graphics cards in the Advanced Dock. Be careful choosing the card - it must be small enough to fit. Right now I'm running with an NVidia 7600GS card that gives me an extra two DVI ports (for a total of three external displays).

You can also get a PCMCIA or USB graphics, but the performance of those solutions range from pathetic to horrid. Not suitable for CAD work.

[kwramm]

alright, beside from buying a PCIe card...

assuming I have have a t60p and a dock, can I drive two external monitors with the internal t60p lcd off?
or is it always internal LCD + VGA out or internal LCD + DVI out?

I'm asking because I have 2 monitors now. If I cannot use both external monitors at the same time when docked, I have to sell one.

[deforest]

I have a t60p docked and drive 2 monitors. One is using dvi the other vga.

I can't use presentation director because the dvi monitor is a lcd widescreen and the presentation director doesn't support it's resolution.


So I've resorted to using the catalyst. You can go in there and enable the second external monitor then move them around, switch resolutions etc.

My setup is the dvi drives a lcd widescreen and the vga drives an older tube monitor. The lcd supports dvi/vga, but the tube only supports vga. And since the lcd is bigger, I use that as a primary.

I found that for me to use the dvi as primary, I had to first go in and unplug the vga monitor, boot the computer, then plug in the vga monitor and enable it. Then that correctly identifies the dvi as primary and the vga as secondary. The default seems to use the vga as primary.

Then using the catalyst app, you can configure the rest, i.e. resolutions, screen placement, etc.

I then created a profile and stored it in the catalyst tool. I found that when I go from undocked to docked (assuming the computer was activate in undock state, thus switching display modes), that the vga monitor becomes primary. So I logon and use the profile I stored with catalyst and select it, and it reverts the displays correctly.

I looked at presentation director and it seems to be able to do the same, in fact you can set a profile to be used when docked. The problem as I said is that one of my lcd monitor is wide screen and it's resolution isn't supported.

[kwramm]

sweet! I can keep my monitor then