what kind of problems were you having with the docking station? i also use the docking station with the inspiron 8200, and it absolutely hates being removed or un-suspended once it's plugged into the thing... something it used to handle gracefully under XP.

where did you get your alternate dsdt source? there is no C840 available on the DSDT homepage, only a C640. i'm not sure what "M50" indicates, either. the latest version of the bios for the inspiron is A11 (i'm using A10 at the moment). what problems did the new dsdt solve for you regarding the docking station?

thanks for any information.

First of all my machine has a different BIOS on it to facilitate adding the C/Dock II. Its a larger docking station similar an inspiron's with the addition of a drive slot and two full length 3/4? height pci slots. The inspirons BIOS does not allow for this. It is flashed with the M50 A11 BIOS which reads C840 now, because I do not have a Quadro graphics card. When added, it will read M50.

Now this is the switch, for what its worth; when using iasl to check for errors with my dsdt, it reported one warning, BUT WORKED PRETTY GOOD I FOUND OUT LATER. I used one of those fixed dsdt's and closed my lid...lockup. The patch is still compiled in but I just use the one that's in there already...it works for what I've tried. When closing the lid and reopening, all i gotta do is hit Fn+F7, comes back on. The power button works out the box for clean shutdowns. Did use CPUDYN BUT SCREWY WITH ACPI AND ALSA SOUND.

Now, my system will no longer eject from the docking station in XP cleanly on my pro and home partitions. I believe it is a service patch thing. I could at once unplug it, then reattach and then eject, but keep getting 'cannot eject for a program is still using primary ide' ere something like that.

Thought it was systemworks, norton's protection on the drive but that's not it, though it was for removable drives.

Maybe try flashing your BIOS to C840 or M50:
If you use access direct, make sure its done now...it will switch the play and stop buttons. You wont be able to use the driver without tweaking it if you dont do it after ya got windows up n stuff. Also it will require a reinstallation of your graphics card.

Oh yeah, your computer will then say C840 and not inspiron 8200. And resplash your bootscreen cause i cant remember the switch to keep it.

Oh yeah M50 is the lattitude c840 with quadro card and pretty much souped up other stuff like top of line screen and hard drive and top of line price.

If your M50 cant handle the gl stuff or locks up they replace it with an inspiron board. Go to Dell's site and do a search. It also gives u a scsi card. They are really cheap on ebay...needed the BIOS for the dock to have different sound cards n stuff.

Got my dsdt from that page...but i think they are junk for my installation...mind u software suspend is not checked in my kernel config.

Essential programs remember their states and are there on startup. Whittle everything down to the minimum, stuff'l boot quickly enough.