Thinkpads Forum

Hi all,

I suppose it might not be useful to many people here, but I tried to drive my Viewsonic 2290b (IBM T221 clone) with my Thinkpad W510 through the displayport with a Displayport-to-DVI adapter and it worked. So I got the full 3840x2400 pixel resolution. Admittedly, only at 13Hz, but it is not the W510 or the displayport's fault, it is the way the video signals are fed to the hires monitor (requiring 4 DVI inputs to get the full 48Hz, using 2 will be only 26hz, hence the 13Hz through one).

Lenovo Literature says Displayport max resolution is 2560x1600, so that makes at least one inaccuracy

A word of caution : using nVidia's nView was useless to display ANYTHING (although the monitor was detected), however using Windows 7 built-in utility it worked like a charm to extend the desktop to the monitor.

Wow - this is amazing news. That means that someone could get a DisplayPort version of a Matrox DoubleHeadToGo and drive two 1920x1200 displays out of the DisplayPort, bringing the number of "native" displays to three.

It is supposed to be even more interesting using the Mini dock Plus 3 (which I have not however), which has 2 DVIs and 2 Displayports (although only 2 of the 4 will work according to Lenovo).

Regarding Matrox' DoubleHeadToGo offerings, I am a bit confused, since it seems able to drive 2 to 3 displays natively from a single displayport (if I have understood correctly) -

I bet you know them much better, I have read your various postings and seen your multimonitor setup videos - and boy, I am amazed !

Cheers

jflores wrote:It is supposed to be even more interesting using the Mini dock Plus 3 (which I have not however), which has 2 DVIs and 2 Displayports (although only 2 of the 4 will work according to Lenovo).

Correct, DVI 1 and DisplayPort 1 are linked/shared, and DVI 2 and DisplayPort 2 are linked/shared. There are only two logical display ports between the four connections.

Good to know, thanks for the clarification !

Neat stuff you have here. I've had a couple of these VP2290 boat anchors lying around the house for several years. Never could get 'em going through any kind of Thinkpad config...until NOW...

I connected an active DP/DVI adapter to the DVI cable marked 'Primary', coming out of the 'A' port on the VP2290, fired it up and Windows saw it right away. And, this is on a W700, of all things. Had no idea this could work. Jacked up the font size a bunch and was cruisin'.

As mentioned above, there's really 4x(1920x1200) coming out of these monsters, and since there's only two output ports on the back of the monitor, each cable coming out of the monitor splits into two DVI streams, each of which is 1920x1200. So, theoretically, if you could hook four DVI connectors into your laptop, you -might- stand a chance of getting it all to work, at the highest speed. HA!

I then tried running a single, DVI-I cable from the 'secondary' output from port 'A' on the VP2290 into the DVI port on the W700, located right next to the DP port. Thought here was to get more bandwidth into the mix, via both the DP and DVI connections.

Couldn't get that to work correctly.

Any ideas on how to expand upon the DP/DVI connection to maybe get more 1920x1200 pipes connected? 13MHz is ok for piddling around, but certainly won't cut it for any kind of video or fast motion.

Until now, I figured the only way to get one of these 3840x2400 monitors going into a Thinkpad would have to be through a high end video card in a ViDock/Expresscard type of setup. This has been more expensive than I wanted to mess with, but since video cards are coming down in price, there may be a ViDock+4 port video card setup that would be affordable and worth pursuing.

Btw, if anyone is really wanting a VP2290, I have a couple, both with -very- minor pixel flaws, that I might part with. Hit me up privately, if interested.

RonS wrote:Wow - this is amazing news. That means that someone could get a DisplayPort version of a Matrox DoubleHeadToGo and drive two 1920x1200 displays out of the DisplayPort, bringing the number of "native" displays to three.

Hi Ron - hey, I've been doing this exact thing for 1-2 years now. I have a real cludge of a setup, currently driving eight 1920x1200 monitors out of my W700. I have three Matrox splitters involved(two TripleHead2Go Digital DVI models and one of the DualHead2Go DP splitters you mentioned) and a ViDock in the mix, too. Each splitter is driving two 1920x1200 streams just fine. Matrox doesn't officially support much in the way of multiple splitter configs, but some 'experimentation', cussing and fiddling around got it all working.

In regards to the DP splitter specifically, nuthin' to it. Plug the DualHead2Go DP splitter into the DP port on the laptop, then hook up two monitors to the splitter and you're up and running.

I'd guess that with your(and others) earlier experimentation using the DVI port on the W510/W520 that didn't work(DVI-I port on those, where you actually need a DVI-D port to do a full 2x(1920x1200) split), everyone -assumed- the same limitations existed coming out of the DP port...oops, evidently not so. Net would/should be that you're correct. One could now natively drive three 1920x1200 streams out of a W510/W520, using a DualHead2Go DP splitter out of the DP port. Nice

Thanks AMATX for your experience feedback, most helpful, and nice to know it does also work out of the box from a W700!
I had a question regarding the DP splitter you are using by the way : does it give you to obtain the equivalent of two separate 1920x1200 streams ?
So as to obtain 26hz instead of 13hz from a single DP connection as I have right now.
Thanks for your help.

^ Yes, the DP port on my W700 has access to the full 4x(1920x1200) resolution of the internal video card. However, half of that is being used by the DVI port. Therefore the max stream coming out of the DP port is 2x(1920x1200). I run that into the Matrox DualHead2Go DP splitter and it drives two separate 1920x1200 monitors. Works just fine.

Now that I think about it, the above must be why things wouldn't work when I added an additional DVI link to the VP2290(directly from the laptop DVI port; no splitter involved) on top of the existing 3840x2400 signal coming out of the DP port. The video card was already maxed out via the DP port and therefore couldn't do much with the extra DVI path. I'm not much of a video guy, but have gotten some things to work via grunt labor/trial and error.

Intriguing idea about splitting up the DP stream several times to jack up the Hz on the VP2290. I suspect your specific question about running TWO 1920x1200 streams into the VP2290 from the DP splitter would work OK. However, THEORETICALLY, even this -might- be possible:

Laptop DP port connects to a Matrox DP splitter. Out of the splitter comes two DVI paths, each of which -might- have a Matrox DVI splitter hooked up to it. Coming out of -each- DVI splitter are TWO DVI paths, so that would total FOUR DVI paths coming out of this mess. You could then hook all four of these DVI paths up to the VP2290 and see whether you'd blow up the neighborhood or just -maybe- have sumpin' that would work. This crappy editor won't allow me to chart out the config visually, but that's the gist of it. The W700 video card can do full speed video to four DVI streams(I'm already doing that), and by splitting it off four ways out of the DP port, it -might- just work. What's undetermined here is whether the 13Hz limitation you mentioned is bottlenecked -only- by the one path out of the VP2290 or whether there's some sort of bandwidth/speed limitation inherent with the DP port on the laptop itself. Since I'm already doing full speed video out of my DP port for 2x(1920x1200), I do wonder if the DP port can handle the full 4x(1920x1200) path at full speed. "Inquiring minds GOTS to KNOWED."

Kinda of a convoluted explanation, but it's late and I'm zonked out, ready for bedtime...

I have the hardware to do the above, but it's tied up on my production system and I don't want to move it, try the above and then have potential problems hooking it back up to the production box. Running a mix of two DVI and one DP splitters is not only unsupported, it's very flaky and touchy when making changes. I leave it as-is to minimize problems. If I can do the below listed ViDock 6 port card stuff, that will free up the splitters and I'll give it a try. Gonna be at least another few days to a couple of weeks before I'll know whether the ViDock 6 port config will work.

A possibly simpler route to the above might be to take what I already have, which is a splitter off the DVI-D port and a splitter off the DP port and just run the four(total) paths directly into the VP2290 and see what happens. I don't know if it would show up on the VP2290 as four separate adjacent 1920x1200 regions, which causes problems trying to get an app to run in full screen mode, or whether it'd all work great and just be one huge 3840x2400 screen. I may try that, too, if I get my new video setup working. Point is, there may be a way to cram the VP2290 bandwidth into the W700(or a W510/W520) via some combo of splitters. RonS has posted some results on multi-monitor support via W510/W520, and if I remember correctly, Lenovo got cheap and made the DVI ports on those DVI-I, which will NOT drive two 1920x1200 video streams. If so, your best bet would be to drive it all out of the DP port + a bunch of splitters. RonS might chime in on this one, as he's THE video guy for multi-monitor support on Thinkpads...

DualHead2Go DP splitters seem to run about $200-250 on ebay and the TripleHead2Go Digital DVI splitters are ~$150-ish, so you can see this isn't dirt cheap to get going. Personally, I like the idea of driving it all out of the DP port, as you avoid the DVI-I issue on the W510/W520 laptops, and in addition, I suspect you'd have better luck getting it all to work as one large 3840x2400 desktop. If you decide to do something like this, run your config by the board here, as there are -many- different versions of the Matrox DVI splitters, and the ONLY ONE you want for DVI stuff is the 3-way digital version.

On the W700, the video card itself can drive four 1920x1200 monitor streams, so the challenge is how to get all of that in/out of the laptop via one DVI-D port and one DP port. That's why I ended up using Matrox splitters; one on the DVI path and the other on the DP path. Each splitter routes it's 2x(1920x1200) stream to two separate monitors, resulting in a total of four 1920x1200 monitor displays. And, it pretty much works(mostly). That said, I'm in the process of trying to figure out & install a 6 port ATI Radeon Infinity 6 card via a tinkered with ViDock box, so that I can dump the Matrox splitters, cuz they're somewhat of a pain in the butt. This stuff wasn't designed to work in this fashion and it occasionally craps out...usually when I don't want it to. But, over time I've figured out most of the bugs and can make it work.

Eventually, I'll drive six monitors via the ViDock(I hope) and the other two via the two normal DVI & DP ports in the back of the W700.

And, as soon as I get some more $bucks$, I'm either gonna upgrade to a W520 and run the ViDock+DVI+DP(or is it HDMI?) combo, or I'll get a mini tower and go with a desktop type config. With a tower, it's easy to install two identical six port video cards(total of twelve monitors) and also get a screaming i7-3960X chip, which is ~2x the i7-2960XM chip's power in the highest end W520. Or hell, I may just buy both and sort it all out


Btw, if you are starting from scratch on trying to get a VP2290 monitor going, I recommend you try one of the current ViDock boxes with a four port video card that'll drive 3840x2400 or greater. In the past, the problem w/VP2290 was -very- expensive video cards, in addition to figuring out how to make it work from a laptop. These days, many inexpensive video cards should support the VP2290 and the ViDock box is $200-300, so one might do this a lot easier and somewhat cheaper by skipping all of the splitter stuff. Since all of the ViDock boxes interface via the ExpressCard slot, you bypass the DVI/DP ports altogether and any bandwidth issues there. The only reason I got involved with all of these Matrox splitters was because there was no other affordable solution when I was setting this up a couple of years ago. These days, there are better/easier/cheaper approaches via ViDock+video cards. Up to you...have fun...

what a HUGE wealth of information ! Thanks for taking the time to post your experience.

I will definitely try to drive the VP2290 first off the mini dock plus 3 (its 2 simultaneous video outputs, both DVI and DP, intrigue me). It will be a matter of a couple of weeks though, since I usually find them more affordable in the US (in France/Europe these are pretty costly).

Depending on how it turns out, I will also give a try to the Matrox solution(s), I have used once a couple of years ago, albeit an analog one, that has worked pretty well in another scenario.

It as been two years that I have purchased this VP2290 beast, and it has been 1.99 years of frustration. I have TRIED to use it from a Thinkpad (with an R61, then T61) through a dedicated ATI X1300 video card on the huge docking station, but all I got was problems and errors due to the Thinkpads' nvidia Quadro chip being not compatible with the ATI board. The only usable resolution was 1920x1200 - but that is not what I intended the VP2290 for

I have also used -err, tried to use- other expensive multimonitor graphic boards, both ATI and nvidia on a half-height Thinkcentre A61 - what was I thinking! underpowered PSU, mechanical height problems and Windows 7 lack of adequate multimonitor and/or driver support were abysmal.

This is why I gave the DP on my newly acquired W510 a shot - and it was a pleasant surprise to see a pretty decent and usable image. Even video was somewhat watchable at the max resolution of 3840x2400, although at less-than-standard FPS.

Thanks for all the information provided, I now see there's hope

^ Yes, the various Thinkpad docks and ports, etc. just don't have the juice to power a VP2290, as you've found out. Join the club; I've have my two VP2290s longer than you and they make expensive door stops. That said, with the various components listed above, there's likely a solution(s) to all of this mess.

I'd just given up on the entire thing, until I read this thread...

Now, you've infected me and one of these days I'll get around to making it all work.

I'm getting my new-to-me external video card going; appears it might work ok after all.

If so, I'll move it to my production setup this weekend, in which case that'll free up my Matrox DP splitter, so I can try running two DVI lines from the VP2290 into my DP port on the W700. Right now, I'm just running the one DVI line in, via DP/DVI adapter, as described in above posts.

If successful, that would mean I can increase the bandwidth to the VP2290 from 13Hz to 26Hz

While 13Hz works ok for static stuff, mild web browsing, and -very- slow motion video, it'll be interesting to see if 26Hz is more real world friendly...

I'll tell you what, EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING, looks much, much better on a 3840x2400 screen with bright colors, etc. These VP2290/IBM-T221 monitors really are sumpin' else. Kinda nice, after 3-4 years, to finally be getting one of 'em up and running.

Good to know you've got infected

Yes please let us know how it goes with your W700 and wether the hz increase is possible.
That would also decide me to try and get hold of a W700 myself, since it also was a concern not being sure if it is/was possible to do so - and such combinations (W700+VP2290) are not exactly trivial, so far I haven't found ANY feedback from a user with such a setup...
thanks a lot for trying

Well, I tried to get my radeon eyefinity 6 card going in a hacked up ViDock, and it would only drive three monitors, not the six I need. No idea what's wrong/missing, but I'd forgotten how difficult AMD/ATI cards can be to deal with.

So, my Matrox DP splitter won't be freed up to experiment with on the VP2290 for any length of time. I -did- try a quickie hook up and it turns out I need a couple of DVI gender changers. I may have some lying around somewhere, but don't know where/for sure, so scratch that idea for the time being.

I should be doing a hardware refresh in the next 30-60 days, at which time the splitters will be done with(finally!), so at that time I will try out the DP splitter. Will be using nvidia cards with that, so hopefully it'll all play together well.

I would recommend not buying a W700 just to try all of this. I'd think the W510/W520 laptops would offer the same DP support as a W700, so why waste the money on an old platform that you don't need? From where you're at now, all you -might- need to pickup would be a Matrox DP splitter, at ~$200-250. There's a couple up cheap right now on ebay and 'completed auctions' shows two or three having sold for much less than $200.

I still have -no- idea whether adding a DP splitter will improve the VP2290 Hz. I'd think so, but almost everything I've tried w/VP2290 hasn't worked, so it's hard to say.

More later, when I know sumpin'...

Hey people are driving these from their ThinkPads? Not just me? Awesome. Awesome. Let's see what did I do so far.

One, you can just plug in the massive (USB+)dual DVI-LFH-60 cable into your two DVI ports and go to town with 2x1920x2400 @ 25Hz. That's very easy. Also, there's no way to go higher than that with two single link DVI ports. There's simple not enough pixel clock to drive more than that, you are at 155.8 MHz, SL DVI goes to 165 MHz and no further.

So how do we get higher with just the dock? Refer page http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc ... det221.pdf page 23. There's (1920x1200)x4, 2624x2400+1216x2400 (I only presume this can be used to drive the monitor in native resolution but it's a bit unclear), (960x2400)x4.

• Split the DisplayPort! Either two DP-to-dual splitter, Matrox DualHead2Go DP Edition for $200 each or Zotac ZT-DP2HD for $50 each. Or split one DP into three DVI, like the, Startech SP123DP2DVI for again $200 magnitude or Matrox T2G-DP-MIF for $300. Clearly two of the Zotac is the cheapest. Here a challenge is Port B on the monitor because the monitor only comes with one 2xDVI-LFH-60 cable. I can only hope that "vanilla" 2xDVI-LFH-60 splitter cables (used for low profile video cards) work for Port B cos finding another of the cables the monitor came with is neigh impossible.
• Convert DP into DL DVI with an active adapter and then apply some adapters from Japan to connect the DL DVI directly into the monitor. There's http://www.itplaza.co.jp/ (or http://www.grimm.jp/t221/) and if you just search http://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/ then you can find a guy selling some cables with EDID override and such. I do not speak Japanese and machine translation is not helpful in this case.

I used easyauctionjapan to buy two itplaza adapters looks like http://i.imgur.com/jAUvS.jpg this (and the T221 in one shipment). and bought two active DP-DL DVI adapters from eBay but couldn't get it to work on Linux but then I didn't try that hard I will be back home March 24 with two Zotac in my pocket (and a 2xDVI-LFH-60 as mentioned above) and will try those next.

Or, the vidock for $200 plus an ATI FireMV 2400 from eBay (be careful to buy PCI Express, many PCI models), for less than $100, in total $300. Inconvinient: either you need to remove the ExpressCard time you every dock or plug/unplug the cable. Meh. I bet they it doesnt have a magsafe like connector for easy plug in Also, the software, not quite sure how Windows reacts to having a different video chipset every other reboot... Linux can cope with this for sure. Still, not too convinient. However, this one has -- by far -- the highest chance of simply working. (The Matrox Parhelia HR256 is the best fit for the monitor but good luck finding a card and then a PCI-E to PCI-X bridge. Even if you can, it'll cost two arms and a leg.)

One must also note the ATI FireMV 2460 with four DisplayPorts. Should the triple DVI splitters work with this then you can drive no less than three T221 off one laptop. 27.6 megapixels, anyone?

While there are video cards with two LFH-60/DMS-59 ports (Jaton Video-PX309-Quad, NVIDIA Quadro NVS 440, Visiontek Radeon X1650XT Quad, Galaxy MDT 210) I have no idea where to find an LFH-60 to LFH-60 cable (the Matrox HR256 came with two so they physically exist or existed) and whether the pinout is the same. (Same oinout problem mentioned above)

Edit1: I did manage to get another IBM cable for my Zotac splitters. Will report back end of March whether this trickery works.

Edit2: given http://www.stonewallcable.com/product.a ... id=SC-9748 this company apparently manufactures LFH-60 cables it should be no problems for them to slap two male connectors on a cable. I will test whether the plain LFH-60 splitter I have works with my monitor so we know a straight LFH-60 cable would work.

First report: No, I can't the Zotacs to work but then again I only tried a few modelines. I quite probably need to fiddle with the monitor EDID as well. And really should try Windows. I wish there was someone to pair on this. It's hard to debug alone.

I don't have availability of a docking station to try all of this with, but eventually will try what I posted above about using one of the DualHead2Go DP splitters, connected to the DP port on my W700. This would(I think) drive the monitor at full 3840x2400 at 25Hz. Not optimum, but marginally ok. Not to be used for high speed video, for sure.

I had inquired to some Japanese guy peddling many T221 monitors on U.S. ebay about the custom adapters, and he wanted BIG $$$ for them, so nogo there. If you come up with some custom adapters that are very affordable, please post a link. You can enter a .jp url into google's search window and have google translate the page for you, if that will help.

Right now, I'm just running one of the four DVI monitor cables into an active DVI-DP converter and plugging that into the W700 DP port. It works, but can be very slow, since I'm using just one of the four DVI cables.

The W700 has a true dual DVI port(DVI-D) and a DP port. The DVI-D would max out at 2x1920x1200, but the DP port can handle the full 3840x2400 of the monitor, but at greatly reduced bandwidth.

I have to do a hardware refresh on my laptop stuff before I can free up the Matrox DP splitter to try with this monitor, so it will be a while longer before I can experiment with all of this stuff.

AMATX wrote:I don't have availability of a docking station to try all of this with, but eventually will try what I posted above about using one of the DualHead2Go DP splitters, connected to the DP port on my W700. This would(I think) drive the monitor at full 3840x2400 at 25Hz. Not optimum, but marginally ok. Not to be used for high speed video, for sure.

I had inquired to some Japanese guy peddling many T221 monitors on U.S. ebay about the custom adapters, and he wanted BIG $$$ for them, so nogo there. If you come up with some custom adapters that are very affordable, please post a link. You can enter a .jp url into google's search window and have google translate the page for you, if that will help.

Right now, I'm just running one of the four DVI monitor cables into an active DVI-DP converter and plugging that into the W700 DP port. It works, but can be very slow, since I'm using just one of the four DVI cables.

The W700 has a true dual DVI port(DVI-D) and a DP port. The DVI-D would max out at 2x1920x1200, but the DP port can handle the full 3840x2400 of the monitor, but at greatly reduced bandwidth.

I have to do a hardware refresh on my laptop stuff before I can free up the Matrox DP splitter to try with this monitor, so it will be a while longer before I can experiment with all of this stuff.

I'm the guy who makes and sells the adapters, email me (cirthix at gmail.com) if you want some. My prices are affordable .