Building a Docking Station

[hjm357]

Here is my latest project:

I would like to construct a docking station for my laptop. Ideally this would connect with USB2.0 or firewire. The devices i would like it to include are 4 IDE devices and 2 PCI cards.

The best i have found thus far is that i can covert all the devices to either IEEE or USB then connect them with a hub. this in my opinion is not worth it.

laptop port replicators do almost exactly what i am looking for, except i would like greater flexibility than they provide.

any suggestions are appreciated.

[cyberskye]

laptop port replicators do almost exactly what i am looking for, except i would like greater flexibility than they provide

What kind of flexibility?

I have no idea how you would handle pci cards. You would need some sort of external board. I bet it would be a lot cheaper to build a separate desktop system.

I would think you might start to hit limitations by running that many busy devices simulataneously through USB bridge, but I have no specific knowledge to back that up. Maybe with a 64bit usb interface?...not that you'll find that for a laptop

Skye

[YeOldeStonecat]

I've never seen any sort of docking station or port replicator that added PCI slots. I've seen them with built in PCI devices...such as additional NICs, etc....but not a PCI expansion slot.

Perhaps another angle...such as....what is the PCI device(s) you wish to add? Might be a USB2 or PCMCIA alternative...depending on the device.

[hjm357]

is there any way to bridge PCI devices to SCSI, firewire or USB at all?

as far as speed, the majority of what i would like to connect will almost never be used simultaneously and are not , so i dont think that i have too much to worry about it.

the reason i want to build this is so that i can use desktop components easily with my laptop rather than having tons of usb peripherals. it will probably turn out to be more trouble than its worth, but id like to fully investigate it first.