Thinkpads Forum

I am taking my laptop on vacation and am wondering if there is a way to hook it up to a tv.

I want to play DVD's on it and have it show on the tv. My help section says I can but I don't see anyway to connect. No s-vid or any other type of hook-ups???

Thanks again,
Julia

If your 600X came with the TV output option, there's a small, circular jack on the right side, next to the external floppy disk port. I believe that if there's what appears to be a cover or plug, then you do not have the option. Four of my 600X systems have an uncovered jack, the others have a cover/plug which I can't seem to remove. In any event, you also need a special S-Video cable that goes to the TV. I'll see if I can come up with the FRU for it.

Okay, a quick check on eBay yields what looks like I think should work:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0005240596

I think that I have a couple of these but don't know where they're at at the moment. I've never tried connecting the 600X to a TV before so I don't know how well this works.

Also, by searching the forums archives using the Search link at the top of each page, I found this:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=8643

rkawakami wrote:If your 600X came with the TV output option, there's a small, circular jack on the right side, next to the external floppy disk port. I believe that if there's what appears to be a cover or plug, then you do not have the option. Four of my 600X systems have an uncovered jack, the others have a cover/plug which I can't seem to remove. In any event, you also need a special S-Video cable that goes to the TV. I'll see if I can come up with the FRU for it

You can also retrofit the jack to any 600 by opening it up and adding the small daughtercard it uses. You'll have to modify the inside of the UltraBay slot. I did that to one of my 600s back in the day, when it was nigh on impossible to find a model with it already built in.

lodica1967 wrote:I want to play DVD's on it and have it show on the tv. My help section says I can but I don't see anyway to connect. No s-vid or any other type of hook-ups???

Ray's advice above is sound and the link he provides to both the ebay item and discussion should explain everything. I use my 600X to watch movies on my TV and it works great.

To summarize:
- you need the special IBM cable thingy (part number 85G1880 and others)
- you will also need an a cable to carry the video signal from the IBM cable to the TV (either a single RCA-RCA connector or a single S-Video to S-Video connector) - the RCA video is usually a "yellow" connector
- you will also probably want a cable to carry the audio signal from your 600X headphone port (a single mini-headphone jack) and split it up into left and right channels in two RCA connectors (these will be the "red and white" RCA connections on the TV)
- if running Windows XP, you need to download and install the Neomagic video driver for Windows 2000 [Document ID: MIGR-4GXLS3]
- you need to change your display to 800x600 resolution and "High color" (16 bit) (Control Panel -> Display -> Settings)
- you need to connect your 600X to the TV before turning your 600X on (using the special IBM cable)
- you need to enable TV out on the "Neomagic" tab (Control Panel -> Display -> Settings -> Advanced -> Neomagic)

Phil.

I have changed the resolution to 800x600, but the PAL format in germany has 720x576. So I cannot see the whole screen. And I cannot go to the lower resolution 640x480. Is there any other solution?

Harald

You can use a monitor to TV converter and use the monitor output. Make sure the converter supports PAL if using overseas, and if it's got an external power supply you want one that is switchable or auto switches to 240V. Of course you can usually pick up a universal wall wart in Germany that will power it.

I found this: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=1430
Seems to be just what you need since it supports PAL and NTSC. Don't believe the 1600x1200 support. Most TVs will only display 600x800 reasonably well, unless it's a high def set. The larger resolution is probably handled through panning system, you only see a portion of the screen at any one time. I've used a converter, with the resolution set at 600x800 it's okay for images, text is a bit blurry.