[PLUG] Docking Station! was: Right angle cat6

Jason Martin nsxfreddy at gmail.com
Thu Oct 25 18:20:48 UTC 2007


On 10/25/07, Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 10:47:39PM -0700, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> > On my old computer the RJ45 jack was toward the back of the computer.
> > On my new, beautiful Thinkpad T61 (love it!) it is in the middle of the
> > left side. This gets in the way of things I want to put there, e.g.,
> > books. It would be nice if I could find a cat6 cable that has a right
> > angle connector, or a right-angle adapter. Does anyone know if such can
> > be obtained, preferably from someone in Stumptown?
>
> Answer:  Docking station.  First, it bypasses the "side connections"
> issues, second, it is much quicker to disengage, third, it saves wear
> and tear on the laptop connectors (and the ethernet socket is much
> more fragile than it should be, and damned hard to repair), fourth, it
> props up the unit so the keyboard is easier to use and the fan is less
> obstructed.  They seem dorky, but they've become essential for me.
>
> Issue to watch out for:  When you undock a laptop, a whole bunch of
> interfaces go inactive at once, which seems to keep the Hardware
> Abstraction Layer software busy.  If you undock and then close the
> lid to suspend, the HAL software may miss the lid close event because
> it is still busy with the other stuff.  So close the lid first, wait
> for the unit to suspend, then pull it from the docking station.  A few
> times I've pulled my laptop out of my bag an hour after undocking, to
> learn that I've used half the battery charge and heated up my bag :-(

Beware, I have noticed my wife's T61 sometimes wakes up when undocking
for unknown reasons.  She runs Windows, but I expect the wakeup event
would be the same for Linux, so your method might not work as expected
on the T61.  My T42p works similarly to how you describe, so something
changed on newer models (maybe just BIOS?).  Probably just the BIOS
option that keeps your USB hot.

> Full Disclosure:  I have a T30 Thinkpad, and cheap used docking
> stations show up all the time.  I bought 10 of them for $10 plus
> $20 shipping (10 docking stations are heavy!) and have them littered
> all over the house.  It is a pity one of them won't fit your T61,
> because you will probably end up spending $100 on a new one.

Yep, the T61 needs a "mini-dock" (~$100), which is totally different
from the old Thinkpad docks.  Don't waste your money on a new full
dock though ($250?), the mini dock has all the connectors you could
want.  I think the new dock is compatible with the T60, so there might
be a few used ones out there.

Jason



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