Thinkpads Forum

I have an Advanced Dock with a PNY VCQ4280NVS-PCIE-PB Nvidia Quadro4 280 NVS 64MB DDR SDRAM PCI Express x16 Graphics Card in the PCIe slot with one monitor hooked up through VGA (the card supports two monitors through DMS59 connector).

The laptop is a ThinkPad T61p 6457-5KU with 15.4in 1920x1200 LCD and 256MB nVIDIA Quadro FX 570M video card running fully patched/updated Windows XP Pro. I am using latest NVIDIA driver for the 280 NVS PCIe card. After some BSoD's I have the external monitor working through the NVIDIA 280 NVS card as expected. Now I have four (possible) devices showing up under Display Properties/Settings, as expected.

The issue is that whenever the laptop is docked in the advanced dock the internal Intel 4965AG 802.11agn(n-disabled) wireless card doesn't come up. Looking in the Device Manager, there is a yellow exclamation mark on the graphics device icon, double clicking on the icon I see an error message in the General tab of the device properties window saying "This device cannot start. (Code 10)." I have updated the wireless driver from Intel's website but no luck.

Undocked, everything works fine.

Is there anything else I can try to get the internal wireless card working again?

I don't have an immediate solution but if you only have one external screen, why don't you connect it directly to the docking station and take out the graphics card?

If you want to eventually use four monitors, look in this thread http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... highlight=. Look for the first RonS post, where he mentions a graphics card that works in that set up.

Thanks basketb.

Yes, I realize that I can connect this monitor directly to the advanced dock and have a painless dual monitor setup - which I used to have until I hooked up the advanced dock. I actually have at least another monitor that I can move to this room and potentially connect to the advanced dock to have three monitors (including the internal LCD) with this laptop. And last but not least trying weird and new (new for me at least) configurations is a painfully fun hobby.

Thanks for the link. I have read through most of the threads for multi-monitor setup on the forum but haven't found a solution yet. Even in RonS' and other's experience the NVIDIA 280 NVS video card works.

Interesting set up.

How is this even remotely possible? The dock is rated for a PCI-E 1x card..and the Nvidia is a 16x card! Not to mention the 25watt power limit on the dock, where I think the 280 draws well over 200watts.

Proteus wrote:How is this even remotely possible? The dock is rated for a PCI-E 1x card..and the Nvidia is a 16x card! Not to mention the 25watt power limit on the dock, where I think the 280 draws well over 200watts.

Good points. I am not trying something groundbreaking here. Other forum members have already successfully tried similar setups.

I also read somewhere that advanced dock supports only 1x but its connector is 16x for sure. Also, according to the ThinkPad Advanced Dock - Overview the officially supported 256MB ATI Radeon X1300 Dual-VGA or Dual-DVI, TV-out PCI-Express Graphics Adapter is 16x. So theoretically I should be OK using another 16x graphics card.

According to this comparison table, NVS 280 draws only 12Watts. In my opinion, 200watts would be a very serious load for a consumer PC grade graphics card.

syedj, did you ever solve your original problem?

basketb wrote:syedj, did you ever solve your original problem?

I did not. I experienced this problem on a T61p but strangely enough the internal wireless in my T60p works just fine while docked on the Advanced Dock in the above setup, without anything else changed. I suspect there is a resource contention issue (possibly IRQ conflict although I haven't seen any clear evidence of it in the Device Manager) with the T61p and WinXP combo since both the wireless card and the external video card are hanging off PCIe bus.

Thanks for the answer. I observed something similar yesterday, though with an ATI X1300 PCIe card in the Advanced Dock. T60p worked without problem, T61p didn't show wireless card. I didn't really care because I usually have wired access when connected to the dock. However, I'm thinking about moving the dock to a place without wired access and than this would be a show stopper. I'm wondering whether an USB wireless stick or PCMCIA wireless card would work. Either should, I think, if your hunch about a PCIe resource conflict is correct.

basketb wrote:I'm wondering whether an USB wireless stick or PCMCIA wireless card would work. Either should, I think, if your hunch about a PCIe resource conflict is correct.

I also don't have wired connection to where the advanced dock is so resolving this issue was very important. I have been using the T61p with a Netgear WAG511 PCMCIA wireless card without any issues whatsoever so at least PCMCIA wireless card should work for you as well and I suspect USB wireless card won't have any issues either.

For reference here is my setup.

Good luck and do report your findings.