Anyone know how to enable video ports on a Lenovo Pro dock?

[SimplyRyan]

I have a Thinkpad T440 that I have running 10.11.4 flawlessly (except for wifi and bluetooth because I can't risk bricking the BIOS chip with a bad flash like what happened to my X220). Everything else works either out of the box or with DSDT edits, including power management, sleep, brightness, function keys, iMessage, iCloud, etc. Since the laptop stays docked at my workstation 100% of the time with ethernet, I can live without wifi. I'll probably break down and get a bluetooth dongle at some point though, and just forgo continuity/handoff.

But my question is whether anyone knows how to get the external video ports working? The Lenovo T440 has a Haswell i5 and HD 4400 graphics, which has full QE/CI after patching. The miniDP on the laptop itself works fine. I have three external monitors, two (left and right) are hooked up using a Display Link USB3 dock (no QE/CI). I have a large main monitor (center) hooked up using a MiniDP to DVI dongle, and it works perfectly. but I'm wondering if there is any way to get the two DP (regular DisplayPort, not Mini), single HDMI and single DVI connections on the ultra dock working? I know the VGA port simply won't work nor does it matter. All of my monitors are Lenovo monitors with DVI connections. If I could get some of those digital connections on the back of the ultra dock



This is my laptop
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t440/


This is the ultra dock
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd028010

 

[RehabMan]

I have a Thinkpad T440 that I have running 10.11.4 flawlessly (except for wifi and bluetooth because I can't risk bricking the BIOS chip with a bad flash like what happened to my X220). Everything else works either out of the box or with DSDT edits, including power management, sleep, brightness, function keys, iMessage, iCloud, etc. Since the laptop stays docked at my workstation 100% of the time with ethernet, I can live without wifi. I'll probably break down and get a bluetooth dongle at some point though, and just forgo continuity/handoff.

But my question is whether anyone knows how to get the external video ports working? The Lenovo T440 has a Haswell i5 and HD 4400 graphics, which has full QE/CI after patching. The miniDP on the laptop itself works fine. I have three external monitors, two (left and right) are hooked up using a Display Link USB3 dock (no QE/CI). I have a large main monitor (center) hooked up using a MiniDP to DVI dongle, and it works perfectly. but I'm wondering if there is any way to get the two DP (regular DisplayPort, not Mini), single HDMI and single DVI connections on the ultra dock working? I know the VGA port simply won't work nor does it matter. All of my monitors are Lenovo monitors with DVI connections. If I could get some of those digital connections on the back of the ultra dock



This is my laptop
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t440/


This is the ultra dock
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd028010

You might have to pick and choose which ports you want to enable (seems to be 4 port hard limit of ports in the OS X drivers, not to mention hardware limitations inherent in IGPU itself).

Perhaps that dock is doing some kind of internal switching to have all those ports, but stay within the limits of the hardware.

At any rate, it will likely require framebuffer patches, so you should probably read up on it...

I'm not sure what you mean by this though...

Everything else works either out of the box or with DSDT edits

A laptop cannot be hacked without a variety of kexts added to the system. Just getting mobile HD4400 working requires FakePCIID. PS2 devices require PS2 kexts. FakeSMC.kext is, of course, required on all hacks. Ethernet usually requires a kext, etc, etc. Your claim of everything working OOB with only DSDT edits is pretty much impossible...

 

[SimplyRyan]

you are correct, I did use fakePCIID (did mention that I had to patch the graphics). As for PS2, of course that requires VoodooPS2 or otherwise, as do most 1GBEthernet. But that's immaterial. As far as everything working out of box or with DSDT patching, I was referring to sleep, function keys, power management, brightness control, battery status, audio, etc.

But that is not the point of this post. I was asking specifically about enabling the external ports on the Lenovo Ultra Dock. As mentioned, the MiniDP port on board the laptop works OOB. As per your question about internal switching, yes. There is a very specific way you can have them hooked up, and only three monitors can be used at a time (plus the internal screen, so 4 total displays) I can also tell you from personal experience that as you approach 8.25 billion pixels or so (4 displays at 1080p, or equivalent to 4K resolution) overall graphics performance starts to slow down considerably, so I think that the chipset has a hard limit of being able to support a single 4K external monitor.

The internal monitor uses LVDS (not eDP). on the Dock, you can use one analog + two digital displays (VGA + HDMI + DVI for example). It's very specific about which ports you can use, for example the first DP and HDMI port are the same output and can not be used at the same time. the second DP and DVI port are the same output and can not be used at the same time either. The VGA is a separate (analog) connection. When I get back to the office on Monday I can dig up the documentation that came with the dock, might shed some light on how the internal switching is done inside the dock.

Do you know of any way I can get some kind of framebuffer dump in windows with the external monitors attached to analyze? If it's just a matter of enabling additional ports to the framebuffer (eg; hex edits to Intel FB, DSDT edits, etc) that shouldn't be too difficult.

Seriously, am I the first person to ever want to enable dock external ports on Intel HD graphics?

 

[RehabMan]

you are correct, I did use fakePCIID (did mention that I had to patch the graphics). As for PS2, of course that requires VoodooPS2 or otherwise, as do most 1GBEthernet. But that's immaterial. As far as everything working out of box or with DSDT patching, I was referring to sleep, function keys, power management, brightness control, battery status, audio, etc.

Correct display backlight control requires either ACPIBacklight.kext, IntelBacklight.kext or an AppleBacklight injector. Battery status requires ACPIBatteryManager.kext. Audio requires an AppleHDA injector or patched AppleHDA.

But that is not the point of this post. I was asking specifically about enabling the external ports on the Lenovo Ultra Dock. As mentioned, the MiniDP port on board the laptop works OOB. As per your question about internal switching, yes. There is a very specific way you can have them hooked up, and only three monitors can be used at a time (plus the internal screen, so 4 total displays) I can also tell you from personal experience that as you approach 8.25 billion pixels or so (4 displays at 1080p, or equivalent to 4K resolution) overall graphics performance starts to slow down considerably, so I think that the chipset has a hard limit of being able to support a single 4K external monitor.

The internal monitor uses LVDS (not eDP). on the Dock, you can use one analog + two digital displays (VGA + HDMI + DVI for example). It's very specific about which ports you can use, for example the first DP and HDMI port are the same output and can not be used at the same time. the second DP and DVI port are the same output and can not be used at the same time either. The VGA is a separate (analog) connection. When I get back to the office on Monday I can dig up the documentation that came with the dock, might shed some light on how the internal switching is done inside the dock.

Do you know of any way I can get some kind of framebuffer dump in windows with the external monitors attached to analyze? If it's just a matter of enabling additional ports to the framebuffer (eg; hex edits to Intel FB, DSDT edits, etc) that shouldn't be too difficult.

Seriously, am I the first person to ever want to enable dock external ports on Intel HD graphics?

Very few people have these docks. You will need to read up on framebuffer patching and do your own experiments. The Windows drivers work completely different from the OS X drivers, so I don't think you'll find much useful information in Windows.

The OS X drivers have a hard limit of 4 ports (internal and external combined).

 

[BadBiscuit]

Seriously, am I the first person to ever want to enable dock external ports on Intel HD graphics?

SimplyRyan, Have you had any luck getting your Lenovo ultra dock working with OSX? I acquired one recently on eBay (40A20090US) hoping to use it as a pass through for either HDMI or DP, and for power. Thanks to the aleixsr guide (with @tluck and @RehabMan's contributions), both HDMI and DP on my T460s work perfectly when connected directly to the laptop ports. Unfortunately, when placed on the dock, OSX is crashing halfway through the Clover boot. If I place it on the dock after booting, it immediately reboots.

I'm not sure I'm qualified to patch a framebuffer, but will help further the cause in anyway I can.

EDIT: I think I spoke too soon. After upgrading the firmware for this dock to Lenovo's latest (2.30.000) it will boot without crashing and supports both the HDMI on the dock and the internal LCD. I'm not sure what version was initially on it, but since it took the upgrade, it did not have the latest. I was also able to boot it with the lid shut displaying only to the HDMI connected monitor, though if I open the lid after it is up that does trigger a reboot. Although not perfect, this is certainly a state I can live with and makes me happy again with my purchase.

 

[URBANsUNITED]

Hi!

Has anybody ever got this dock working?
Mine is half ok:
Need to set "display on Thinkpad" in bios - display on dock crashes the system half way starting up.
Connected by HDMI, both displays correctly recognoized.

Sleep is not working, then it directly restarts the system. BUT sleep without the connected dock works.
Using an X240

Any help possible?

Thanks

URBANsUNITED

 

[swatchie-1]

Hi!

Has anybody ever got this dock working?
Mine is half ok:
Need to set "display on Thinkpad" in bios - display on dock crashes the system half way starting up.
Connected by HDMI, both displays correctly recognoized.

Sleep is not working, then it directly restarts the system. BUT sleep without the connected dock works.
Using an X240

Any help possible?

Thanks

URBANsUNITED

Hi i'm having the same issue. Does anyone have any solution to the sleep issue of the Lenovo laptop when attempting to sleep while in dock? It keeps rebooting if we let it sleep, shutdown or restart.