T61p + docking station, possible to use 2 external monitors?

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Slog6 · #1 Post by **Slog6** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 5:17 pm

I have a T61p, windows XP Pro and a Thinkpad docking station, I want to attach 2 external monitors. Is this possible and do I need more kit ?

basketb · #2 Post by **basketb** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 6:09 pm

It's possible. You can connect one via DVI and the other via VGA ports. However, you can't use your Thinkpad's screen as a third monitor at the same time.

venro · #3 Post by **venro** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 4:13 am

basketb wrote:It's possible. You can connect one via DVI and the other via VGA ports. However, you can't use your Thinkpad's screen as a third monitor at the same time.

Same thing with T60 (ATI)?

Slog6 · #4 Post by **Slog6** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 5:05 am

Thanks Basketb

I hoped it would be this straight forward. Reading around it seemed some people needed all sorts of fancy sounding video cards and adapters so I had some reservations. I'll report if all goes to plan.

basketb · #5 Post by **basketb** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 9:26 am

venro wrote:
basketb wrote:It's possible. You can connect one via DVI and the other via VGA ports. However, you can't use your Thinkpad's screen as a third monitor at the same time.
Same thing with T60 (ATI)?

yes.

basketb · #6 Post by **basketb** » Wed Jul 02, 2008 9:29 am

Slog6 wrote:Thanks Basketb

I hoped it would be this straight forward. Reading around it seemed some people needed all sorts of fancy sounding video cards and adapters so I had some reservations. I'll report if all goes to plan.

You need an extra video card (and that's when it can become ugly) if you want to use more than two displays (either two externals, or one external and the built-in) or your displays are WQXGA (with which I do not have any experience).

#7 Post by **RonS** » Thu Jul 03, 2008 10:55 pm

I have both a T60p and a T61p, each with four monitors. Just get a docking station and an ATI V5200 video card to put in the dock's expansion bay. Two of the monitors come from the T6x unit (one DVI, one internal or VGA), and the other two come from the V5200 card.

ShadowRider · #8 Post by **ShadowRider** » Fri Jul 04, 2008 12:20 pm

Do you use a DVI monitor on the DVi port or some type of converter to VGA?

#9 Post by **RonS** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 10:49 am

The DVI port drive DVI. The DVI on the Thinkpad is DVI-D, which means that it's digital only and does not include analog VGA capability. The DVI ports on the add-on card are DVI-I, which includes both digital (DVI-D) and analog (DVI-A).

ShadowRider · #10 Post by **ShadowRider** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 1:48 pm

So, I guess the answer to my question about what type of monitor is on the DVI-D port of your dock station is DVI?

I wanted to know because I have an extra VGA LCD and wanted to know what (if any) converter you might have used to get a VGA monitor (if that is what you had) to work so I could do similar.

#11 Post by **RonS** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 3:22 pm

Yes, DVI.

The back of the dock has both DVI and VGA connectors. You can use either one, or both at the same time. If you use both, then the internal LCD will be dark.

crashnburn · #12 Post by **crashnburn** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 12:00 am

RonS wrote:I have both a T60p and a T61p, each with four monitors. Just get a docking station and an ATI V5200 video card to put in the dock's expansion bay. Two of the monitors come from the T6x unit (one DVI, one internal or VGA), and the other two come from the V5200 card.

Wow! Four

.

crazyfrog · #13 Post by **crazyfrog** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 8:36 am

crashnburn wrote:
RonS wrote:I have both a T60p and a T61p, each with four monitors. Just get a docking station and an ATI V5200 video card to put in the dock's expansion bay. Two of the monitors come from the T6x unit (one DVI, one internal or VGA), and the other two come from the V5200 card.
Wow! Four .

That is a amazing! Previously only seen from the movie Matrix. humm, I will be getting an Advanced dock.

BTW, do the four monitors aline? Can they form a 2 by 2 matrix?

crashnburn · #14 Post by **crashnburn** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 4:03 pm

You gotta find Panels that have Minimal to Zero Border Framing. That would be almost seamless then.

Maccess · #15 Post by **Maccess** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 2:13 am

crazyfrog wrote:
That is a amazing! Previously only seen from the movie Matrix. humm, I will be getting an Advanced dock.

BTW, do the four monitors aline? Can they form a 2 by 2 matrix?

Multiple Monitor setups are pretty commonplace in financial markets.

Try googling multiple monitor setups. FYI, you could also get a video card that supports four monitors (often through TWO dual-link DVI connectors--each can be split into two single link DVI ports). That would total six.

Then you could get a Villagetronic ViDock Gfx and run dual monitors off the expresscard slot. That would bring the total to Eight.

Then you could get a Villagetronic VTBook and put it in an empty PC card slot and drive two more monitors. That would be ten monitors off your Thinkpad.

Then you could attach up to six monitors via USB-DVI converters for a total of sixteen external monitors, all running off your thinkpad.

Running off battery power is not recommended.

#16 Post by **RonS** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 11:36 am

Maccess wrote:
crazyfrog wrote:
That is a amazing! Previously only seen from the movie Matrix. humm, I will be getting an Advanced dock.

BTW, do the four monitors aline? Can they form a 2 by 2 matrix?
Multiple Monitor setups are pretty commonplace in financial markets.

Try googling multiple monitor setups. FYI, you could also get a video card that supports four monitors (often through TWO dual-link DVI connectors--each can be split into two single link DVI ports). That would total six.

I routinely buy every quad card on the market for testing. I've never seen one that will fit in the Advanced Dock. Can you provide a link? The best you can get with a card in the dock is a Dual DVI. It's possible to split the outputs downstream using something like Matrox to-go product, but there are some serious trade-offs there.

Then you could get a Villagetronic ViDock Gfx and run dual monitors off the expresscard slot. That would bring the total to Eight.
Then you could get a Villagetronic VTBook and put it in an empty PC card slot and drive two more monitors. That would be ten monitors off your Thinkpad.

Sorry, but you can't run both of these cards at the same time on the T6x. The PCMCIA card's external connector/dongle sticks up too high and doesn't allow room for the ExpressCard's connector above.

Then you could attach up to six monitors via USB-DVI converters for a total of sixteen external monitors, all running off your thinkpad.

Standard USB/DVI or USB/VGA products, while they work for typical office apps, struggle severly with pushed with graphics-intensive apps. But I have a lot of hope for the new USB DisplayLink technology. I have yet to find a DisplayLink device that will handle 1920x1200 (really, I'm hoping for 2560x1600) but that may come with time.

I have a setup right now that runs 16 monitors off a T61p (possibly 24 total), including three 30" monitors, eight 20" monitors and 24" monitors. It relies on MaxiVista driving two other computers, each with multi-monitor setups.

Maccess · #17 Post by **Maccess** » Tue Jul 22, 2008 4:37 am

I routinely buy every quad card on the market for testing. I've never seen one that will fit in the Advanced Dock. Can you provide a link? The best you can get with a card in the dock is a Dual DVI. It's possible to split the outputs downstream using something like Matrox to-go product, but there are some serious trade-offs there.

There is a review here about a quad head card in an advanced dock. Note this is for a 2D card mainly for financial markets trading. 4x(1600x1200)

http://www.tradersworld.com/computers/T ... tion_4.htm

http://www.tradersworld.com/computers/T ... cking8.htm

And a listing of multi-head cards tested to work with the Advanced dock.
The PNY NVS 285 (2-DVI Ports) , the NVS 440 (4-DVI Ports) and the Matrox P65MD0E125 (2-DVI Ports) QIED128PAE video cards (4 DVI-Ports).

Sorry, but you can't run both of these cards at the same time on the T6x. The PCMCIA card's external connector/dongle sticks up too high and doesn't allow room for the ExpressCard's connector above.

You're probably correct. I mistakenly assumed the Advanced Dock has a PC card slot like the Dock II. Perhaps the card in the Villagetronic ViDock Gfx can be rplaced with a quadhead?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vid ... 933-3.html

Villagetronic also made a device that allows you to run two of their cards in an external box attached by cable to the PC Card slot. The box has its own power supply. However, their website says it is custom order only.

Standard USB/DVI or USB/VGA products, while they work for typical office apps, struggle severly with pushed with graphics-intensive apps. But I have a lot of hope for the new USB DisplayLink technology. I have yet to find a DisplayLink device that will handle 1920x1200 (really, I'm hoping for 2560x1600) but that may come with time.

You are correct that 1600x1200 is the highest that displaylink devices can handle. Also, monitors attached to these will be slower than those connected to the laptop's internal video and the dock's video card. However, you could arrange your desktop so less dynamic data, e.g. chat windows, charts, e-mail programs, etc will be on the USB attached monitors.

crashnburn · #18 Post by **crashnburn** » Tue Jul 22, 2008 4:09 pm

I have a setup right now that runs 16 monitors off a T61p (possibly 24 total), including three 30" monitors, eight 20" monitors and 24" monitors. It relies on MaxiVista driving two other computers, each with multi-monitor setups.

Wow! Would love to hear more details about it.

basketb · #19 Post by **basketb** » Tue Jul 22, 2008 5:19 pm

yes, plus pictures, pretty please.

#20 Post by **RonS** » Tue Jul 22, 2008 7:00 pm

Maccess - thanks for the links to those cards. I have a few Matrox QID Pro cards here, but they don't fit in the dock. Matrox's low-profile version of the card slipped by me. I guess because I look for DVI 1920x1200 or higher.

The Unit in that picture (above) is a T4x, which uses the Dock II. WIth that setup, you can have to PCMCIA cards because there's another slot for one on the dock. Not so for the Advanced Dock, which dropped that capability.

I'm going to shoot a video of the 16-head system, probably this week, and post a link on this thread. Stand by.

Maccess · #21 Post by **Maccess** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 12:11 am

RonS wrote:Maccess - thanks for the links to those cards. I have a few Matrox QID Pro cards here, but they don't fit in the dock. Matrox's low-profile version of the card slipped by me. I guess because I look for DVI 1920x1200 or higher.

The Unit in that picture (above) is a T4x, which uses the Dock II. WIth that setup, you can have to PCMCIA cards because there's another slot for one on the dock. Not so for the Advanced Dock, which dropped that capability.

I'm going to shoot a video of the 16-head system, probably this week, and post a link on this thread. Stand by.

You could use the 4x1600x1200 outputs on the card for 1600x1200 monitors and the DVI+VGA output on the dock for 1920x1200 monitors.

The picture, from Villagetronic, is indeed a T4x, but it doesn't have any dock. Four of the monitors are driven by two VTBook cards, one plugged into the computer, the other through a pass-thru that provides external power (the assembly is on the left side). Hey, an idea....you could use that pass-thru AND an express card in a T6x!

We're all looking forward to your video. I've used Synergy to run my mouse across screens connected to DIFFERENT computers. I think its a better concept than MaxiVision.

1) Synergy is Free
2) The programs on the other computers' screens run on the OTHER computer (not the controller's CPU).

Of course, you can't drag and drop Windows across different computers.

#22 Post by **RonS** » Wed Jul 23, 2008 11:01 am

I just looked up Synergy. It appears to let you share a keyboard and mouse between computers, each computer has it's own desktop.

MaxiVista lets you actually extend your desktop the the screen(s) of other computers, just like you plugged in additional monitors to your computer.

Please correct me if I got this wrong, but they seem like different products.

Maccess · #23 Post by **Maccess** » Thu Jul 24, 2008 4:34 am

Yes, it is a different product, but Synergy may be more suitable for certain applications--e.g. you could have your web browser on a different computer, but just swing your mouse (and keyboard control) over to it from your main computer to look things up on the web, and go back to your main screens as if it were an extended desktop.

crashnburn · #24 Post by **crashnburn** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 5:04 am

RonS wrote:I just looked up Synergy. It appears to let you share a keyboard and mouse between computers, each computer has it's own desktop.

MaxiVista lets you actually extend your desktop the the screen(s) of other computers, just like you plugged in additional monitors to your computer.

Please correct me if I got this wrong, but they seem like different products.

I was wondering if either of them support OSX / OSX86? i.e. Cross Operating system screen bridging...

SafeHarbor · #25 Post by **SafeHarbor** » Wed Nov 25, 2009 9:07 pm

Hi, folks,

No great shakes compared to sixteen monitors, but I did try out Maxivista on my desktop and both of my Thinkpads. It's not fast enough for video applications over a Gigabit network, and it's not compatible with Vista Aero eye-candy, but it does work across Vista, XP Pro, and Windows 7. It's fine for relatively static applications like email and chat and for freeing up space on the first monitor. The way it works is that the first PC becomes the server. Maxivista appears as a new display adapter in Device Manager. After connecting, the laptops showed up as additional screens in Vista's display settings, with the ability to drag them around to represent the monitor arrangement (which determines which way the mouse cursor goes to change screens).

I wasn't very happy with my T61p at 1680 x 1050 and 15-inches. Things were just too small with it on my desktop. I was pleasantly surprised that my 1024 x 728 R52 displayed application windows at exactly the same size as my 1680 x 1050 22-inch desktop monitor. That's what I'm mainly using now, although I'm still using Maxivista to *remote* the T61p sometimes.

If interested, you can read my review of Maxivista here:

http://www.brighthub.com/computing/wind ... 49820.aspx

And I want to see that video of the ThinkPad running 16 monitors. I'll stand by!

Lamar

bhtooefr · #26 Post by **bhtooefr** » Thu Nov 26, 2009 9:18 am

basketb wrote:You need an extra video card (and that's when it can become ugly) if you want to use more than two displays (either two externals, or one external and the built-in) or your displays are WQXGA (with which I do not have any experience).

WQXGA is 2560x1600... what's the maximum resolution of the VGA port on either the ATI or nVidia cards?

Of course, a single WQUXGA monitor can't be driven by the ATI card, no way, no how - gotta have an external card or a nVidia card to do that. (ATI cards max out at 2880x2880 per connection, so you only get 2880x2400. Of course, connecting the monitor to two connectors gives you 2x 1920x2400, which is within the capabilities of the ATI card.)

To RonS... how well does that V5200 setup work for you? I'd consider getting the full dock and a PCIe V5200 if it would drive my T221 at full resolution, in Windows 7, and maintain the ability to dock and undock at will.

T61p + docking station, possible to use 2 external monitors?

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