reliability of X2 UltraBase

[AlanHK]

I was looking at a secondhand shop that had a pile of Thinkpad docks,
X2 UltraBase I think.

I was about to buy one for my X24 but when the shop owner tried to demo them it wasn't very smooth.

One Thinkpad couldn't detect any docks. (I didn't have mine with me.)
Trying another TP, it could detect the dock, but not the CD drive. Tried 3 or 4 different Ultrabay CD readers, one finally worked partially but couldn't boot from it.

I didn't have time to hang around longer to see if he could find a working combination, but I wonder if this indicates a general issue of reliability of the dock, or just this shop had a lot of junk?

I mainly wanted it because of the CD drive, as it was only a little more expensive than a USB CD drive and gave some other features, but obviously if they are so hit and miss in operation I'll pass.

[tom lightbody]

tested 5-6 x2* ultrabases with never a problem: could the CD drives be bad?