Dell Laptop and D/Dock System - Working Great with SCOPE

huffcw · Post by **huffcw** » Fri Dec 09, 2005 11:35 am

In case you may be interested...

I have a D600 Dell laptop and recently purchased a D/Dock docking station. The D/Dock includes one PCI slot, so I thought I would give it a try with SCOPE.

I insalled a three DSP card in it, connected everything and it's working great.

With a small modification to the D/Dock, I think I may be able to get a 6 DSP card in the docking station without a problem.

eliam · Post by **eliam** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 8:32 am

Did you try to fit a plusar in it? Is the system still working all right? I'll be building a portable recording system and this seems to be an interesting option...

virtualstudio · Post by **virtualstudio** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 3:11 pm

http://search.ebay.com/dell-expansion-d ... rZ1QQfnuZ1

huffcw · Post by **huffcw** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:46 am

It is still working great - but I still haven't tried to fit a larger card in it. There is definetly enough room for a 6 DSP card, but there is a small fan in the back of docking station that will need to be worked around or modified (possibily replaced with a slightly smaller fan).

huffcw · Post by **huffcw** » Thu Dec 29, 2005 6:48 am

More information about the D/Dock: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/a ... /index.htm

huffcw · Post by **huffcw** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 6:20 am

I now have it working great with a 6 DSP card. I had to remove the fan and install a smaller one to get it to fit (which required me to take the docking station apart, but it wasn't too difficult).

I have used a Magma chassis in the past and had a lot harder time getting it to run smoothly without PCI overflows. This solution works great (it seems to be more of a direct PCI connection rather than trying to run PCI through a Cardbus interface, like Magma).

katano · Post by **katano** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 6:54 am

nice to hear! i own a dell precision m70 notebook, but have only the small docking station called d/port... i'll may take a look to the dock with pci...

thanx for the infos...
katano

qAPLAh · Post by **qAPLAh** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 11:35 am

I got a m65 and pulsar2 working in the docking station, however i have a lot of crashes. The docking station doesn't provide much cooling, only a (6'') fan... that i also had to take out before the card fitted in the dock.
So my guess is that heat causes the freeze-ups. I am trying to design an external removable cooling unit with a much larger fan in it at lower speed with its own powersupply.
Does anyone have any recommendations regarding what tweaks in my WindowsXP pro and/or in the BIOS of the laptop might help optimize the performance of Scope 4.5?
Already stripped XP a good deal.
My aim is to build a mobile recording/performance system.

dehuszar · Post by **dehuszar** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 11:21 am

Hmmmm. Just checked out the Magma.com site and they now have a new PCI-Express->PCI chassis. I'd be interested to know if there's improved bandwidth going into newer laptops with the CardBus Express ports.

Shame I sold my Magma off a while ago. Looks like I could just swap the CardBus adaptor. Perhaps I'll give em a call next week & get the scoop.

Sam

huffcw · Post by **huffcw** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 9:12 am

qAPLAh wrote:I got a m65 and pulsar2 working in the docking station, however i have a lot of crashes. The docking station doesn't provide much cooling, only a (6'') fan... that i also had to take out before the card fitted in the dock.
So my guess is that heat causes the freeze-ups. I am trying to design an external removable cooling unit with a much larger fan in it at lower speed with its own powersupply.

I think you may be right about the heat issue. I also had to remove the fan to install the Scope card, but I installed a smaller fan at an angle in the same location. It seems to work fine to keep things cool enough. (Also, it is connected to the thermal control so that it only turns on when necessary - so it doesn't run all the time.) I have had it running for 24 hours at a time without any problems.