Dock II Video Card testing..

[Medessec]

I recently got myself a Thinkpad Dock II, the 2877 that you can use with the T3x, A3x, and T4x. After I found out it has a full PCI slot in it, I decided to see how it could cope with a video card, preferably a nice one... so I got a PCI-variant NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS. I believe this is one of the later 8400 GS cards, as the VBIOS identifies 512MB of VRAM, quite a bit for the 8400. That's more than the Quadro 570Ms you see in the T61, a graphics chip which I recall is very closely related to the 8400 GeForce.

Booting into Safe Mode of either XP or 7, or running either without a proper graphics driver, seems to allow it to function normally. I currently have a VGA cable plugged into the 8400GS, which is plugged into the Dock II. I'm currently interfacing a spare T43p I have with the Dock II, which has a 2GHz P-M, the ATI V3200, a 30GB non-registered HDD(so I get the 2010 error every boot) and 1GB RAM.

When I try installing a proper driver, XP BSODs and 7 just refuses to start properly. It makes it to the "Starting Windows" boot sequence, but the Windows logo animation never plays.

I fear there may be an issue with the PCI bus... and some part of the Dock II and the way it interfaces with the T43p, it can't cope with the 8400 GS on a PCI bus. I looked at the Thinkwiki, and a couple of really old ATI cards and other cards are noted as being "compatible", but no cards as new as this.

Is there any advice you guys can think of? I'll be playing with this over the weekend... hopefully I have some luck with it, a Dock II with a 8400GS installed sounds like a tasty mix. Although at the moment... best case scenario, it looks like you'd have to install Windows 7, or your OS of preference in a very particular configuration to tolerate the PCI graphics card. Quite a bit more rowdy than the PCI-E slot in the 2503.

[is]

My advice would be booting other operating system on your laptop, let us say a Linux live CD or an Ubuntu installation media, and see what happens. This way you will know for sure if there is a problem with this hardware combination or you must look for something related with your video driver.

[Medessec]

My advice would be booting other operating system on your laptop, let us say a Linux live CD or an Ubuntu installation media, and see what happens. This way you will know for sure if there is a problem with this hardware combination or you must look for something related with your video driver.

I tried a Puppy Live CD Linux boot, and everything seemed to function normally. It seems however the driver it uses is quite barebone, very similar to the VGA driver that Windows Safe-Mode uses.

Since then I've managed to try booting with the V3200 as the default graphics, and seeing if Windows will pick up the 8400GS and let me use it. A couple of times tonight, it's been able to just work as a second monitor device and second video card, but when I try using Aero in Windows 7, the T43 instantly powers off and refuses to power back on when connected to the Dock.

I fear the 8400GS might be drawing too much power, or causing some other PCI-bus issue with the Dock, but Windows doesn't bring up any alarms otherwise. I'll play around with it some more, but I think the conclusion so far is that the Nvidia GeForce 8400GS PCI is not compatible with the Dock II for normal use.