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Hello:
This isn't really my first post, but it's my first in quite
a while, so let me introduce myself.
I managed to snag a 760CD when they were just coming out
and were "hot." Of course, they're all but obsolete now,
less than a year later. Sigh. It was my love for large
screens and fast processors (when the P90 was considered
"fast"), along with the need for solid support from a
solid company that drove me to buy the 760CD. And now,
it's that last matter, the "solid support" that I'm
having a problem with.
I have NEVER gotten the "Virtual screen" feature to
work on my TP760CD. I know other's have, or at least,
I've known people to SAY they have, but I just cannot
get it to function. Another member of this list wrote
here with the same problem a while back, and I didn't
see any responses. I'm hoping I have better luck ;-).
The problem, specifically, is that when I access the
"Display" feature of the "ThinkPad Features" utility,
all the Virtual screen buttons are greyed away. To
further compound the problem, the buttons to enable
the internal modem and midi port are greyed away as
well. These later two problems are new, and they
came about after I spent a day installing EVERY new
utility/driver/update I could pull off of IBM's web-
site in an attempt to solve the "Virtual screen"
problem.
So, I'd dealt with IBM's tech support in the past
for this problem, without resolution (they were dumb-
founded, in essence). And today I tried again. This
time, however, the tech, after putting me on hold and
researching the problem, came back and told me that
Win95 is the problem, and the ThinkPad Features program
doesn't work well under '95, and he further told me
that the TP760CD doesn't "support" virtual screens
on Win95. He claims it's supported under DOS and
"Windows" (his term for Win3.1) only. He didn't mention
OS/2, by the way. When I pressed him to tell me why,
he went on about how "Device Manager takes control",
and that I have to do all of my configurations first
through that -- I need to Enable/Disable the modem
by clicking the checkbox in Device Mgr's "Device
Usage" box under the "General" tab, for example.
This, to my mind, is nonsense; Device Manager doesn't
understand the TP's BIOS to perform the functions
that IBM's "PS2" or "ThinkPad Features" utilities
are intended to.
On that note, I'm able to open a DOS window and use the
PS2 command to enable/disable the modem and midi-port
When pressed to explain why that works and the "features"
program doesn't (they do the same things, after all,
one's just GUI-based), he fell back on his "Device
Manager" mantra, and never really explained it. And
he wasn't able to explain why it's only recently that
"features" has greyed out the modem & midi buttons.
He asked my BIOS rev, util rev, etc., and seemed
satisfied, and started talking about "Device Manager"
again. Sigh.
So, rather than have this wind up as a "IBM has bad
service" message, (sorry, I'm just frustrated and
dismayed at the responses I got), I'm hoping someone
here can help. Specifically, the problems I'm having
are:
1) Virtual screen buttons are greyed-out under the
ThinkPad features program. I can't enable this
feature.
2) For both the internal modem (Mwave) and midi-port,
ThinkPad features greys out the enable/disable
buttons. I have to use the DOS "PS2" command to
enable them. This problem has only recently
surfaced, and is probably related to my updating
all the ThinkPad software to the "latest."
3) And, along the line of #1, I'm unable to get my
external video to run in 1024x768, it runs in
640x480 and 800x600 (256 colors). The video
drivers I've tried are:
a) IBM ThinkPad(Cyber9320)VL
b) IBM ThinkPad(Cyber9385/82)VL
c) Trident Super VGA
I know this is supported, and the tech said that
THIS, at least, should work.
I'm running Win95, and in battling this problem I've
installed Support Pack 1 and other patches from MS
for Win95 (none of them were ThinkPad-related, but
I like to keep things current, and I was hoping,
nonetheless, that it might help solve the problem).
Any thoughts? And, if not, please let me know if, at
least, anyone ELSE has the Virtual screen capability
working on their ThinkPad 760CD under Win95.
Thanks,
Dean Cashen
cashen@primenet.com