A21m won't recognize untrabay in 2631 Docking Station

[fish7]

Hello,
I'm having a problem with a Thinkpad a21m (2628-FTU) and a 2631 Dock. When attached to the dock, the thinkpad doesn't recognize the ultrabay in the dock. It doesn't matter what item (hard disk, CD, DVD etc.) is installed in the dock - none are recognized. We have a number of a21m's and 2631 docks which we use daily. Swapping units, docks and disks reveals this problem to be limited to one a21m. Other units work fine on multiple docks and the problem a21m consistently fails to detect on multiple docks. Some details:

1) The a21m in question (2628-FTU) is new to us. It's a 750mhz PIII, 512 meg, new 30 gig disk - running a clean install of Win 98 (from original IBM a21m recovery disks) then upgraded to Win2000 sp4 including the latest driver upgrades from Lenovo. BIOS has been upgraded to KXET36WW (1.09) also from Lenovo. This is our standard setup which has been working fine. We have a number of a21m's all running this same basic setup and I haven't experienced this issue with any other machines.

2) Besides the dock detection problem, the machine seems to work fine. The internal ultrabay runs various CD / CD-RW, DVD, Hard disks, internal floppy is ok, PCI is ok etc. When attached to the dock, the machine boots normaly, locks the dock and charges. I have only tested the dock ultrabay and haven't tried to detect dock PCI cards with the problem machine.

3) If the system disk is swapped to another a21m - the dock and it's ultrabay are detected and work fine. Thus the issue seems to be with the problem machine itself.

4) The Device Manager of the problem machine shows the same thing whether attached to a dock or not:
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller
Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel

5) The Device Manager of a good machine attached to a dock shows:
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller
Primary IDE Channel
Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

6) Detecting new drivers / changing controllers (CMD Ultra DMA IDE driver for Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000) as suggested at:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... K4PWW.html does not solve the issue of detecting the dock. However, the machine continues to work ok with this change. Following this scheme, I have tried different controller combinations - but have had no luck - thus I went back to the original Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller as it's working ok on our other machines.

7) Device Manager shows all devices to be "working properly".

When the problem machine is attached to the dock and and booted - no new hardware is detected. Manually detecting new hardware via various schemes while attached to the dock fails to detect anything new.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the Forum.
You mentioned swapping the HD from the 'bad' A21m into another A21m works fine.
Have you also tried the HD from a good A21M in the 'bad' A21M?
If that doesn't work, I'd say you need another motherboard for it.

[fish7]

Thanks for the reply - that's a logical step.
BTW - Any day is a good day for a Guinness...

Swapping another disk into the problem system yields the same result - no detection of the ultrabay in the Dock and the Device Manager lists the same 3 IDE controllers as before.
I've been concerned that it may be a motherboard issue, however it seemed a little odd that one set of IDE channels were working fine.

Any other ideas?

If it comes down to it, I've got a spare a21m system with a cracked screen that perhaps I can cannibalize. The cracked screen system is a 2628-FSU while the system with the IDE issue is a 2628-FTU . Both are 15in screen. A motherboard swap is a pretty big teardown. Perhaps I can just swap the screens instead of swapping motherboards?

[RealBlackStuff]

The only difference between those two seems to be the COA, one is W98, the other W2K.
Swapping out the LCD, or the whole lid, seems the easiest solution.
Before you do that, check that replacement A21M with an external monitor, to see if everything else is working.