IBM Thinkpad w/ Thinkpad Dock and external monitor - SOLVED!

[dona]

Hello,

I've been fighting an XFree86 configuration problem for many months that I finally solved with the help of Knoppix. The suggestion came from another post on these Fora, too.

My system is an IBM Thinkpad A21p with a Thinkpad Dock. The problem is that, while Knoppix (and all other Linux distros I tried) worked in the machine while NOT docked, NONE of them would give graphical output to my external monitor while docked.

The Thinkpad uses an ATI mobility 128 Rage, which is automagically detected and the ATI driver installed. That's the problem - the ATI XFree86 driver has a bug. If I booted Knoppix with xmodule=vesa or xmodule=framebuffer, I got the proper graphical output.

I hope this saves some other person the trouble I went through. There were NO posts about Thinkpad hardware that I could find that helped.

[A. Jorge Garcia]

Thanx for the info, I'm looking into getting a used thinkpad off ebay to use with KNOPPIX and am looking for this kind of info. In fact, I have my eyes on an A21 auction right now....

[dorianW]

THANK YOU!

I've been dealing with this same issue for a month.

I'll try the fix tomorrow.