Too bad the docking station won't work on my ThinkPad R40. But, the Radeon 7000M isn't bad at all, but, some games run rather sluggish with 16MB video RAM. Glad that the card works with your ThinkPad. Is it possible to flash the R40 with a T40 BIOS or is that impossible?

very interesting testing but that MX4000 with 32bits memory at 150Mhz makes me sad!
even MX4000s deserve better!

I think there are options without the dock,
like using adapters for PCI from the PCMCIA slot? or even better for newer NBs using the express card to pcie x1, or the internal pcie slots normally for the wireless lan card

but the dock solution looks to be cleaner and simpler

bjwil1991 wrote:

Too bad the docking station won't work on my ThinkPad R40. But, the Radeon 7000M isn't bad at all, but, some games run rather sluggish with 16MB video RAM. Glad that the card works with your ThinkPad. Is it possible to flash the R40 with a T40 BIOS or is that impossible?

Dunno, I've never messed with an R40 or T40 & don't know much about them. Given my X24 is not "officially" supported on this dock, but works anyway, if yours has the right connector I'd say there's a decent chance it'd work. I'll take a photo of the docking connectors this evening if needed.

SPBHM wrote:

I think there are options without the dock,
like using adapters for PCI from the PCMCIA slot? or even better for newer NBs using the express card to pcie x1, or the internal pcie slots normally for the wireless lan card

Some (not all!) mfgrs have been known to "whitelist" the internal mini-PCIe slot and only allow it to work with a few officially supported wi-fi cards. (Sidenote: I hate this kind of crap!) If you can find one with an unlocked slot (or maybe a hacked firmware available that removes the whitelist?) you 'should' be able to use a mini-to-standard adapter and a miner-style 1X riser cable to run a full-size GPU, at least as a secondary card. I've seen it done on youtube but haven't tried it myself.

Even 1X PCIe should have some significant bandwidth improvements over "old" PCI.

[ Going back a few posts, re: the Dell PD01X: ]

cyclone3d wrote:

Ah, ok. Been quite a while since I had one of those docks.

Are you able to plug in a power adapter to the laptop itself while docked? I don't remember if it will fit.

Not on mine, which has the power jack at the back. There's about 8-9mm back there if you want to start bending things, but I don't. 😜 There might be the odd model that can dock to this with a side power jack, but no idea if it would accept dual-powering like that anyway.

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Interestingly, Nathan of Pixel Pipes has just posted a massive old-PCI graphics card showdown which is definitely relevant to this kind of use.

I'll take a snapshot of my ThinkPad R40's docking station port and post it on here later on tonight.

Here she be:

Do you have pictures of the docking station port on your docking station and does it have an option to install a CD drive into the docking station as well?

Can't say exactly from pics alone, but looks the same:

Also, yes to the CD/DVD bay:

Very nice! Good to see a thinkpad actually doing something.