ThinkWiki - User contributions [en]

Talk:ThinkPad Advanced Mini-Dock

2014-02-25T00:31:08Z

Bigstape: /* Discharge caps */ new section

We do have 8 Advanced Mini Dock in our company, but none of my collegues can manage to dock in properly. To do so you have to press very hard in the middle of the edge on your notebook, I cannot imagine that the display will survive this for a longer time.
You control to have connected properly by lifting your notebook - if connected properly, it will not disconnect.
In all cases, ours do disconnect, even when locked with the key.
Our unsatisfying solution: We place a mouse-pad under each Mini-Dock - now connecting is no problem any more.

Lenovo is unable to reproduce this problem with their own hardware - the support asked me to send one notebook and one Mini-Dock to them to schottland so that they can investigate in that case. That means one collegue will have to survive without his comuter for I don't know how many weeks. Lenovo cannot send somebody to confirm the problem inside our house. This kind of Support is very poor!
And, of course, I am wondering: I am the one who bought exactly this 8 notebooks together with this 8 Mini-Docks, which don't want to fit together.

Are all the others connecting without problems ?

Please tell me your experiences.

I have the same problem. I put some rubber feet on the bottom of the dock, but it's still pretty hard to dock the computer reliably and it requires lots of force. I'll try the mousepad trick, for what that's worth. --[[User:Dave abrahams|Dave abrahams]] 17:20, 25 April 2007 (CEST)

It seems to be a problem with T60 models manufactured in August 2006 (?) (S/N L3-FL??? 06/08), I do have some other T60 now without this problem. Meanwhile IBM/Lenovo has confirmed the problem (to me), but this was a long way. I sent my T60 and Minidock to them in 5 Feb. 07, today we have 22 May and it is still not back. At least IBM/Lenovo has given me another T60 for this time.
If I had this choice again, I wouldn't complain to IBM/Lenovo, I'd just try to buy some "rubber-feet" for my Minidock. --[[User:Holzbein]] 16:40, 22 May 2007 (CEST)

== Mini-dock power problem ==

'''Note:''' see http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-67382.html for the solution to this problem

I have a T60p, and if I place the machine onto the Advanced Mini Dock when it is asleep, it turns off. The only way I can prevent this from happening is to wake the machine up before I put it on the dock. Does anyone else have this problem? --[[User:Sridhar|Sridhar]] 14:38, 2 January 2007 (CET)

I have the problem about half the time even when the machine is already awake. --[[User:Dave abrahams|Dave abrahams]] 17:17, 25 April 2007 (CEST)

We also have another problem with Keyboards connected to the Minidock's PS/2-Port. Sometimes it is behaving like the SHIFT key is held permanently, and to escape from this situation you have to press SHIFT many times (or reboot). This happens with different PS/2 Keyboards of different manufacturers, but it happens not every day, maybe once a week. So how should I complain about this ? How can I demonstrate the problem ? I don't expect it to be solved, only to cost my nerves. So I better buy some new USB-Keyboards and stop using the Minidock's PS/2-Port. --[[User:Holzbein]] 16:45, 22 May 2007 (CEST)

I have this problem as well. It wreaks havoc when I'm in vi. I'm thinking this model dock might just be a lemon. [[User:Sridhar|Sridhar]] 13:57, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

== IBM Thinkpad Z60t with Advanced mini Dock - Dual Video Out ==

I wanted to know if anyone has any solution for getting dual video out using the Z60t with the Advanced Mini Dock. Since the Z60t doesn't have an ATI built in video card like the Z60m, IBM/Lenovo say it doesn't support using the DVI out when docked. Unfortunately I found this out after purchasing it (2 years ago).

I just started using my laptop as my primary machine. And now I really would like to get the dual video setup as I have a very nice 2nd LCD sitting here powered off :(

There was a very similar conversation under the Thinkpad Advanced Dock, but I didn't understand the answer.

Anyway, please help me out, would really like to get this working. Thanks Much!

== Discharge caps ==

If you buy one of these docks used, save yourself a lot of headaches and buy one with the static discharge caps installed, because I couldn't find these caps anywhere.

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?&LegacyDocID=MIGR-67382

Hopefully you can make out the caps in the photo of an item listing.

Talk:ThinkPad Advanced Dock

2014-02-25T00:28:52Z

Bigstape: /* Discharge caps */ new section

I just purchased a new Z60t, and, after talking to Lenovo support, discovered that none of the new Z60t series laptops with Intel graphics chips (which is most of their Z60t models as of December, 2005) support DVI output with the Advanced dock. I was told that the Z60m models with ATI chipsets do support DVI, but I can't confirm that.

== External Dual-head with addon PCIe card? ==

My company just bought us brand new T60p's with the Advanced Dock. We all use dual 19" LCDs with out desktops and would like to replace the desktops with our new laptops, but we need to have this dual-head setup. I know this docking station has capacity for a PCIe card, so I would like to add either an ATI or nVidia card that supports 2 monitors on a single card to run our dual 19" monitors. Is this possible? Is there a better/other way to accomplish the same thing? I don't want to use the laptop LCD with an external monitor (though using the laptop LCD *in addition* to the dual external LCDs would be nice!), I want to just use the dual external monitors when the laptop is in the dock. (Note, we're running Ubuntu Edgy Eft on these laptops).

You should theoretically be able to use the TMDS controller (DVI) and one of the DACs at the same time each one sourced to one of the CRTCs, so you could connect one monitor to the DVI port and one to the VGA port for a dualhead setup. You can't use a DVI->VGA convertor on the DVI port (at least on the dock IIs) since it's DVI-D only. --AlexDeucher

== Works OK ==
It looks like the docking station support in Linux is OK. I am using A T61 (7664) with Ubuntu 8.04 32-bit and features I needed so far work fine, that is: additional UltraBay slot, sound/ethernet passthrough, serial port, memory card reader, USB slots, and warm docking/undocking. Didn't test the video ports, though.

== W500 with Advanced Dock not compatible with NVidia NVS 290 add-on PCIe card ==

As of October 2008, Lenovo only lists a discontinued ATI X1300 card as compatible with the Advanced Dock. Instead, we tried a Lenovo brand Nvidia NVS 290 graphics card in the Advanced Dock attempted with two different W500s. NVS 290 card fits fine. First machine had Vista installed. Roughly 5 out of 10 boots the dock appeared to detect the graphics card and sent the Vista boot screen to one of the monitors connected to the NVS 290 in the dock. Other half of the boot attempts did not show anything on the NVS 290 attached card. After a successful boot, however, we were unable to install the Nvidia drivers (the control panel showed the standard VGA driver and would not display to both displays). The other W500 had Ubuntu 8.10 installed, but the boot graphics were never displayed by the dock graphics card (not necessarily a Ubuntu problem). After 3 unsuccessful boot attempts to the Ubuntu machine, we gave up.

DVI + VGA passthrough connectors on the dock work fine to produce external dual monitor video when using the W500 onboard ATI graphics. Intel graphics only drives the VGA, not the DVI.

== Discharge caps ==

If you buy one of these docks used, save yourself a lot of headaches and buy one with the static discharge caps installed, because I couldn't find these caps anywhere.

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?&LegacyDocID=MIGR-67382

Hopefully you can make out the caps in the photo of an item listing.

Talk:Problem with unauthorized MiniPCI network card

2014-01-09T23:15:43Z

Bigstape: /* How many people have really successfully taped over a MiniPCIe PiN */

== Solution for R32, T43, T6x ==
Basically solved [http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=55837 here]. Will be finalized into some user-friendly thing hopefully.

== Affected Models ==
I am unsure about which models this applies to. I have seen reports of this problem affecting a T41p, T43, X40, R31, X31, and T30; but I do not know how far back this problem goes or if there are exceptions. If anyone has better information, please clarify/specify the "Affected Models" section. --[[User:Kevinoid|Kevinoid]] 05:44, 14 Dec 2005 (CET)

I have a R40 model 2681-K9G that came without any mini-pci card so I bought a Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG mini-pci card for it. When I discovered that it would not work in my Thinkpad I came to this site to see if there was a fix. Seemed like there was, so I bought a mini-pci-to-PCI adapter and installed the card(s) in my desktop. Now I need to know what vendor and device ID strings to use when I flash the card's BIOS. Anyone have a list?

== Solution on T43? ==
There were several edits to the previous page to the effect that "this didn't work for my T43". Although I do not weight this as highly credible (please just ask for help on the ML rather than adding random comments to pages), I did feel that it deserved a mention that the solution may not work on the T43. If anyone can confirm or deny this statement, please do so (and possibly ask on the ML for solutions if it does not work for you). --[[User:Kevinoid|Kevinoid]] 05:44, 14 Dec 2005 (CET)

== Confirmation - patch not working on T43 ==
I can confirm, that a "nvram/cmos" patch is not working on my T43, exact type 1871-A62. I tried several cards (some working without patch in another thinkpads (t40, t42, x40), but no success.--[[User:Jap|Jap]] 09:50, 13 June 2006 (CEST)

== Hotplugging PCI device ==
I'd like to send out a '''BIG FAT WARNING''' that 'hotplugging' the mini-PCI card can easily lead to frying the system board, mini-PCI bus, or both. Yes, it happened to me... :-( Interrupting the boot process at the lilo boot menu, and then inserting the ipw2915abg card worked as a charm to circumvent the BIOS white list. However, somewhere it must have gone wrong because now the laptop hangs immediately when the IBM/Intel boot logos appear. --[[User:LJSBrokken|LJSBrokken]] 13:01, 20 July 2006 (GMT+1)

== Z60 series ==
I tried this on a Lenovo Z60t. Bought an Intel Wireless card since the linux drivers for the madwifi are crap. I applied the C-Patch from here. Then after booting with the intel device installed I get some weird broadcom PXE boot messages displayed ontop of the key symbol for startup security. Even if I don't put my finger on the sensor, it continues with GRUB. At this point I can't use the keyboard, the key symbol is still displayed in the upper left corner. After a few secons grub starts with its default entry (Gentoo Linux). It all works, but no Wireless Adapter shows up in lspci.

So, I don't have that 1802 error, but still can't use my wifi card. Any ideas?

== Z60t ==
I have tested the C code in my Z60t. I have BIOS 1.24 and Embedded Controller 1.18.
Nvram was succesfully changed, but no difference in how the bios work: with original card works properly and no strange errors. With Atheros AR9285: still Unauthorized error.
--[[User:Msxisalive|Msxisalive]] 20:20, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

== G40 series ==
According to [[http://www.wifi-forum.com/wf/showthread.php?t=60620|this forum post]], the CMOS hack (I assume they are referring to the bit-twiddling code) works. Does anyone else have anything to confirm this? I might well try it myself (in which case I'll update the main table), but I'll have to at least get an aerial first.

[[User:lentinj|lentinj]]

== no dice on T43 ==

Also can confirm the T43 is much more resistant to the unauthorized mini pci card problem. No 1802 didn't work (it worked for my T40). Changing the PCI class id to 0x0280 (networking device - other) also didn't shake the message. Finally, I tried to masquerade the card as a one of the whitelisted ones via the ath_info utility from madwifi. I made a mistake at this point and didn't update the subsystem vendor id / subsystem device id, just the primary pci vendor and device ids. I *still* got the warning message, and now the ath driver doesn't pick up the card, so I can't use ath_info. The card is basically bricked, unless I find time (ha ha) for some kernel hacking. Moral of the story is be careful with ath_info.

You should be able to use ath_info _without_ the madwifi driver use some low level pci tool to manually configure the card. Have a look into the source code comments at the begin of ath_info.c. On the other hand adding a new set of vendor ids in the madwifi driver isn't a big deal either. - [[User:jal2|jal2]]

== IBM R40e ==

Have an IBM R40 & R40e, R40 - linux no-1802 cd worked flawlessly, r40e - linux no-1802 cd - hangs on confirmation the patching - maybe a keyboard error, but I dont have dock nor USB keyboard to try, the DOS CD, worked perfectly on the r40e (although I was a little nervous about bricking the R40e ;-). A little note - the r40e obviously dont have an antena - i'll have to get some, but its working even without antena for short range indoor (the accesspoint is about 3 meters away)

== Other issues with unauthorized cards ==

I'm not sure if this is common but my Intel Pro 2915ABG (not from IBM) works on my T41 (both from eBay so some patch was probably already applied) except that the WLAN LED on the laptop stays off all the time. If this is common to all non-authorized cards, this wiki article should mention this. (yak - 24.01.2004)

It does the same for my r40 and not IBM intel 2200, I think that the led would work only if the PCI ID of the minipci card would be changed to IBM, but i dont know excatly how to do this, I just remember seeing it somewhere (kajencik - 24.01.2008)

I now know that someone changed the PCI-ID of my Intel 2915ABG card so it looks like an IBM one. Yet the LED didn't work. However, I've found a way to fix this: [http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=395350#395350 see here]. Changing PCI-ID is quite easy, see [http://stachon.webpark.cz/ipw-eeprom.html this] (also helpful: '''Patching the EEPROM''' section of [[Ipw2200]] article). (yak - 4.03.2008)

I've added a new section called "Problem with WiFi LED". Comments and contributions are welcome. (yak - 5.03.2008)

== IBM Thinkpad R31 ==

I have the BIOS hacked in my R31 so it boots with the unauthorized card and XP picks it up, but XP will randomly lock up with the current card (Atheros 5005G) I have tried another of the same chipset and it does the same thing. What I shall try soon is to swap the 5005G with a friend for a Realtek card from his laptop. Does anyone know if there is an incompatibility issue with Atheros card in the R31?

== dead links ==
i'm just trying to fix the 1802 error, but several links indicated in the useful solutions section don't work any more:
* modification of the BIOS whitelist: [http://www.paul.sladen.org/thinkpad-r31/wifi-card-pci-ids.html http://www.paul.sladen.org/thinkpad-r31/wifi-card-pci-ids.html]
* modifying the PCI-ID of the wlan card for atheros: [http://www.dagarlas.org/stuff/computing/article0001.php http://www.dagarlas.org/stuff/computing/article0001.php]
* use the no-1802 and no-01C9 Linux Live CD: [http://rapidshare.com/files/134063984/ibm_wifi_v2.zip http://rapidshare.com/files/134063984/ibm_wifi_v2.zip]
* use the DOS no-1802 utility: [http://jcnp.pku.edu.cn/~shadow/1802/no-1802.com http://jcnp.pku.edu.cn/~shadow/1802/no-1802.com]
well, it remains to compile and run (as root) the C-code, which was written by Matthew Garrett. that seems to be easy and has worked for t40, ubuntu and a broadcom pci card, according to the list of successful BIOS modifications (in this case only the CMOS has to be changed, which is more secure). therefore i'll try it. but is anyone able to retrieve equivalent links or to upload the live cd again? --[[User:Jwollbold|Jwollbold]] 22:03, 6 September 2008 (CEST)

== Success on X61s ==

I bought a non-IBM Intel 4965 from eBay and was able to get it running without twiddling the BIOS. I'm running Ubuntu Intrepid.
* The X61s doesn't seem to check the second Mini PCIe slot (near the audio sockets) against the whitelist. The antenna cables are long enough to reach if you (carefully) untape them from the plastic cover sheet.
* The card reported that the killswitch was always on, regardless of its actual state. I assume that it's only wired to the first PCIe slot. I got around this by taping over pin 20 with a tiny piece of a post-it note. (I can come up with some photos if it helps).
This disables the killswitch, but it never worked with the original Atheros card anyway, so it's no big loss to me.

Interestingly, I had no problems running the machine with two WiFi cards. I recall that others have reported the BIOS complains if there are two. Maybe someone has a use for this.

== How many people have really successfully taped over a MiniPCIe PiN ==
I keep finding instructions to "tape over PiN 20", or "just tape PiN 18" and this casually dispensed advice seems like disingenuous rebroadcasts of something they've never done themselves. The PiNs are smaller than the tip of a pen, even a ThinkPad stylus is wider. The task itself is frustrating and should be undertaken with a new, sharpest of razor blades, a good magnifier glass/visor in a well lit area on a stable surface. Anyone should thoroughly research a software based solution for your hardware/unsupported card combination before attempting to tape over a MiniPCI-e PiN.
* Tested on {{X230}}, taped pin 20 and tried both half-mini-PCIE and WWAN mini-PCIE slots, didn't work - [[User:Fabian|MagicFab]] 17:43, 9 January 2013 (CET)
* Success on {{T500}}, placed an unmodified Broadcom 4311 in the second slot, no 1802 error but the card wouldn't work. It worked after taping over pin 20. It was not particularly difficult. [[User:Bigstape]] 9 January 2014

Talk:Problem with unauthorized MiniPCI network card

2014-01-09T23:12:30Z

Bigstape: /* How many people have really successfully taped over a MiniPCIe PiN */