Dock II (model 2877) and PCI VGA card

[user17600]

All, here is my situation:

I bought a Dock II for my 6YO son's T42 specifically to be able to add a PCI VGA card for his games (nothing big: Cars, Madagascar, some school things).

It's a Nvidia GeForce FX 5200, 256MB card. The issue is that without the card inserted, the TP boots and the fan in the dock starts and everything is hunky-dory (the leds near the power button on the dock show the HDD activity and the docking status too). The VGA port works fine, the TP recognizes the dock.

But as soon as the card is inserted, the TP boots, but off the battery, no leds on the dock, no fan in the dock, nothing. Laptop boots fine, but no longer recognizes the dock. Tried this with his T42 and with my daughters t40 and my t41. Nada.

I've searched (seemingly) high and low, and while I can find references to the use of cards (e.g., http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkPad_Dock_II) but it seems very few people use the dock with a PCI VGA card.

Does anyone have any insight as to how I might get this to work (I've looked through the manual that came with the dock to see if I need to disable the exiting VGA & DVI ports, but can't find any jumpers or anyhthing to set), or even perhaps a 128MB or better video card they successfully use in the dock?

Thanks!

[fasterbybike]

There's a setting in the BOIS (F1 when you boot) that allows the video to be switched from AGP to PCI. Not sure if this is what you need - give it a try and let us know if it makes difference.

[user17600]

Thanks for the response. It's funny, but the entire dock just would not power up with that card in the slot.

Anyhoo, I just received an ATI Radeon 9200SE 128MB card from Ebay and that puppy works fine (albeit with the drivers from 2 versions back... the most current versions wouldn't lite up the direct 3d for some reason), so all of my son's games are working fine.

Just need to confirm that the Kubuntu OS likes the new card... and put the 256MB back on the 'bay.

Thanks again,

MJM

[Peter_Peril]

This post got me thinking about the power requirements of PCI video cards especially those above 128 MB. I am researching these issues in preparation to use a dock with my T30. Is there any detail on the specifications of the docks PCI connection? perhaps we can rule out 256MB cards functionality all together

NB: Dollars to donuts some one will attest to having a dock which works just fine with a 256 Mb PCI

[user17600]

Peter, you could be onto something, although there were two reports on the thinkwiki page linked above of 256MB cards working, at least with caveats.

The 256MB card I tried worked in another machine, and old Dell Optiplex 500Mhz full tower with a 500watt power source, but failed to work consistently in a third machine, a no-name 2Ghz mini-tower with only a 300watt-er.

So maybe you need to look for the lowest power consumption for a 256MB board and it might work okay. I didn't look up the wattage that the dock will deliver, but it's prob not much, and when these docks were built, a 256MB board was probably not a real serious consideration.

I'm going to try to update the wiki page with my board findings once I put kubuntu through some paces; perhaps you would consider the same if you are successful (or lack thereof, which is also helpful).

Cheers,

[Peter_Peril]

I've been looking at this issue for a a few days , googling for threads of related interest. Basically What I think is at play here is the voltage requirments for the particular VGA card and what is actually supplied by the PCI connector.

I am assuming that the dock is using PCI 2.3 Spec's and that the connector is 32 bit. Unless I read the spec's incorrectly, 5V cards generally won't work, preferring instead 3.3V cards. PCI 3 spec's removed support for 5V devices.

When I receive my dock I'll confirm the spec's and I'm sure I'll be able to match it up with a decent VGA card. Which surprisingly seem to be plentiful

On the other hand I have to confess I'm doing most of this because of an addiction to CounterStike Source, a Steam game which I enjoy in my infrequent downtime.

[marcdw]

Y'know, I don't even know how much power the Dock II provides.
The manual that came with mine didn't have a spec sheet.

In some other threads someone mentioned use of the
Nvidia-based BFG GeForce 6200 but whenever I looked up
info on the card there was always a stated power supply
requirement (forget what it was) that made me think the Dock II
might not be enough.

Anyhind, my recent tests with the VisionTek X1300 256MB proved
to not be too good. Besides having a fan (added noise) the
negatives were from mild to unacceptable.
The IBM logo was always a brightly-colored psychedelia, my
boot logo was usually visually corrupted in some way but the
biggie was the occassional lockup of the machine.
Should've read the older posts that already mentioned that
problem before purchasing.

When that happens subsequent restarts of the machine would
only make it as far as the IBM logo. I always had to pull out and
reinsert the power chord for the machine to boot up.
On the openSUSE linux side Kaffeine kept crashing after trying
to play any video file. Just trying to access the Xine settings
in the program would crash it. At times playing a video would
cause all of X to crash. This is a driver thing I guess.

Now I'm currently trying out a PNY Quadro NVS 280 64MB card.
Went straight to the Omega drivers so can't comment on
Nvidia's stuff.
So far so good. I'm looking to try out a dual-monitor setup
(2nd monitor just came in today).

On the Linux side I was a bit confused on whether or not
this card is legacy or not. Reading a list of cards and PCI ids
at a SuSE site I was sure the card was old and would have to
use the legacy drivers. Found out that was not the case as
the legacy driver couldn't find a card. Went with the current
drivers and was able to reconfigure X.
Kaffeine now works just fine again but I'm still testing.
KDE interface and/or mouse seems a bit slower but I haven't
yet tweaked anything.

Hopefully this card will work out. I don't do games on this
machine other than some old school scrollers (DOSBox anyone?).


Marc

[Peter_Peril]

In some other threads someone mentioned use of the
Nvidia-based BFG GeForce 6200 but whenever I looked up
info on the card there was always a stated power supply
requirement (forget what it was) that made me think the Dock II
might not be enough.

Yeah, I was mildly drooling over this one; as well the ATI X1300. I couldn't find power req's on many of the older PCI line up and when I did they usually referred to the main PSU

I think my hypothesis is valid none the less. One of the benefits of setting hardware standards is that a high degree of devices will be compliant. PCI standards, as I alluded to in a previous post should be sufficient to assure that whatever device you use will work without having to resort to the kind "plug and pray" many of us endured in the days of Win 95, ME

Thanks for your post, please update your opinion with your new card. I should have my Dock (2631) within the next week or so and I'll be able to join the hunt for the perfect card in earnest!

[marcdw]

Okay, in the past two weeks the PNY Quadro NVS 280 has been working out pretty well. Apparently Windows XP already has a compatible driver for it so it didn't go through the new hardware detection phase.
I went straight for the Omega drivers (no real reason) but also downloaded packages from PNY and Nvidia's site just in case.

The Quadro has a 59-pin connector that requires a separate connector for VGA or DVI (59-pin to two video connectors Y-cable).
Much to my surprise it came with Y-cables for both.

The card hasn't suffered from any lockups or strange behavior until today (not the card's fault).

After my second monitor and DVI cable arrived I went about doing the dual monitor thing. Using inexpensive 19" monitors at 1280x1024.
I had the nvidia control panel set them up for DualView. Works well. Finally I can have a program open and when I need its help file it doesn't obscure anything. I've gotten kind of tired alt-tabbing and whatnot.

I then quickly went to openSUSE and setup X for dual monitors. I spent a couple of hours having fun there.
Firefox occupying the whole of screen 2 while vlc media player pops up over in screen 1.
Oh, and video playback was nice unlike when I had the X1300 in there.

However, when I went back to Windows everything locked up during startup. Hard. The busy cursor would freeze and I'd see
little artifacts on the display(s).
The ThinkPad/Dock would not fully restart unless I unplugged the power or undocked/redocked the laptop.
Spending the past few hours in and out of safe mode I found the culprit to be one of the Nvidia startup files.
First I thought it was the Nvidia-Omega service file but I believe it was the NvCplDaemon. One of three files loaded, the other two being NvMediaCenter and nwiz.
The Daemon seems to be directly related to the service file because in msconfig I had disabled all startup entries
but left services untouched. At reboot and restart of msconfig I saw that the Daemon was no longer disabled in startup.

Anyhind, why the Nvidia program went bad is beyond me but as luck would have it other things happened all at once
(firewall no longer automatically starts even though it's set to automatic, Places bar in open dialogs were gone, and
somehow the Google Updater made it unto my system.
All after installing stuff that came with my new Brother MFC multi-function machine).

Having those startup programs disabled seems to have no impact on the dual screen setup so things are okay right now.

That all said the card itself seems to be doing fine. I don't have any widescreen or high-resolutions to test at the moment.
I do now have a new VisionTek X1300 card not doing anything.


Marc

[Tim M]

I do now have a new VisionTek X1300 card not doing anything.


Marc

Is it still not doing anything?

[Tim M]

I've been doing some searching for low-profile PCI video cards and have come across this passively cooled nVidia GeForce 8400 GS 512MB for not a lot of money. It appears to be low-profile and therefore compatible. What is unclear to me is if the Dock II could support the power requirements (I would assume so). Thoughts?

The manufacturer, Sparkle, has announced GeForce 9400 and 9500 cards in low-profile PCI, but I haven't seen any available for sale yet.

...I couldn't find power req's on many of the older PCI line up and when I did they usually referred to the main PSU

I think my hypothesis is valid none the less. One of the benefits of setting hardware standards is that a high degree of devices will be compliant. PCI standards, as I alluded to in a previous post should be sufficient to assure that whatever device you use will work without having to resort to the kind "plug and pray" many of us endured in the days of Win 95, ME

Thanks for your post, please update your opinion with your new card. I should have my Dock (2631) within the next week or so and I'll be able to join the hunt for the perfect card in earnest!

Any luck with your dock? I'd like to know if I can reasonably expect the PCI slot to support a 512 MB card (both power and voltage) before I pull the trigger. I can't find specs with that level of detail for either the dock or the card.

Yes, I'm doing all this in a vain attempt to run Tomb Raider Underworld.