Compaq Docking Station

Compaq Docking Station add connections to your laptop and allow you to use peripherals such as mice, full sized keyboards, monitors, printers, scanners etc. In other words, when you are on the road or mobile, you don’t need many of these components, thus a docking station is a part of a laptop and contains hardware which not always necessary and so remains on the desk of your home. Docking stations provide connections for expansion cards including optical drive bays, hard drive bays, mouse/keyboard connectors (PS/2), additional PC Card slots, USB ports, external display connectors, and range of other devices which inhibits portability and not considered necessary for a laptop.

There are two ways of doing docking or undocking of a laptop, that is, cold or hot. When insertion or removal from the docking station is done after the computer is shut down it is called cold dock or undock. On the other hand, when it is inserted into or removed from the docking station, while the computer is running with or without programs and documents open it is known as hot dock or undock. Different docking and undocking behaviors have been observed in laptops, it is because computer manufacturers design different BIOS and docking stations for their laptops. For example, Compaq docking station is manufacturer/model specific. Others are either universal (which use USB ports) and some connect through a PCMCIA card. All have the same function; they just differ in their features or look. Manufacturer specific is not useful for laptops with any other manufacturer, but blend well when connected to a laptop for which it was designed.

For the first time in 2002 a new type of dock was introduced as the Oysterdock, referencing how to use dock clamps around the laptop while it is docked. In recent docking stations laptop screen are used as primary screen instead an external monitor. It helps users to position their laptop screen according to ergonomically suitability. This type of docking station is also called laptop stand, it offers connection to external devices such as mouse, keyboards etc., and networks via an internal USB ports.

Nowadays, it is becoming harder to find large docking stations, which has expansion bays or slots, but compact port replicators are easily available. Most of the laptops contain enough ports to help dispense your needs, for example, networking, 2-4 USB ports, and external DVI or VGA port for monitor. If your mouse is not responding, for example, PS/2 mouse is not responding on Compaq Armada 7800 docking station, this behavior may due to BIOS not set to allow multiple pointing devices. To solve the problem replace the computer’s CMOS setting which will allow multiple pointing devices. Please refer to computer’s documentation before changing CMOS settings on your computer.