Adapter to connect to work docking station

Lennys_Shinpad

Hi, I have worked from home since lockdown and have a nice setup for my work laptop (two monitors, laptop, mouse, webcam) that is connect via a USB C connection to a docking station.

For my personal use, I have an old Lenovo X200 laptop. It is pretty basic but does what I need of it.

I would like to connect my personal laptop to the work docking station when using it. The issue I have is that the X200 I have does not have the USB C port. Is there an adapter I can buy that could allow me to do this? I have looked online and can see some USB to USB C adapters but they all look like they are for charging rather than for use with a docking station, which is what I want it for.

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

James.

Neil_Jones

As a general rule, you cannot use a USB-C adapter to connect a docking station to a USB 3.0 host device, it can only be connected directly via a native USB-C port.

There is a reason the dock has a USB-C connector and not a USB-A connector. This being that the USB-C connector has more wires in it, those wires are needed to support the HDMI output. There are USB-A docks with HDMI output but they will cost at least twice as much because they have a graphics chip in them  But as you want to reuse the existing setup this probably won't be an option.

Ooh_Yea

You'll probably need a HDMI/display port cable, power and usbc to USB converter for the mouse & keyboard. 

I use a KVM instead of my work docking station. It's easier to switch between the two.

Lennys_Shinpad

Thanks for the replies. Think I'll just stick to using the personal laptop by itself for the time-being. If I upgrade it I'll look for one with a USB C adapter. Thought there might be a simple way. Not worth the hassle if not.

tafelmoneysaver

If your monitors have multiple inputs then you may be able to link via an X200 docking station, circa £20 on ebay.

It doesn't do what you want, but could save you some plugging and unplugging.

jon81uk

Our Dell docking stations at work come with a USB-C to USB-A converter built into the cable.

Pretty certain they work the same no matter which is used, but USB-C will power the laptop.

What brand and model is the dock?

pete-20-11

jon81uk said:

Our Dell docking stations at work come with a USB-C to USB-A converter built into the cable.

Pretty certain they work the same no matter which is used, but USB-C will power the laptop.

What brand and model is the dock?

Yep, I’ve got one of those docks. Works fine for both my laptops, a bit of a pain to keep switching between the two plugs (having to reach around a desk) but otherwise works fine. 

jon81uk

pete-20-11 said:

jon81uk said:

Our Dell docking stations at work come with a USB-C to USB-A converter built into the cable.

Pretty certain they work the same no matter which is used, but USB-C will power the laptop.

What brand and model is the dock?

Yep, I’ve got one of those docks. Works fine for both my laptops, a bit of a pain to keep switching between the two plugs (having to reach around a desk) but otherwise works fine. 

I don't need to swap cables, the adaptor is at the end, so if using a SB-C laptop you remove it and with a USB-A one you push it on.

[Deleted User]

This thread is making my brain hurt with incorrect info. 

Neil_Jones said:

There is a reason the dock has a USB-C connector and not a USB-A connector. This being that the USB-C connector has more wires in it, those wires are needed to support the HDMI output. 

There are no extra wires for HDMI in a USB-C connector.

Compared to USB 2.0 which uses a pair of wires for both send and receive, the USB 3.0 standard uses twice as many data bus connectors, 2 wires for transmitting and 2 wires for receiving. All USB 3.0 retain the original USB 2.0 pair along with the 4 superspeed USB 3.0 wires.

This is the same in both USB-A and USB-C connectors for USB 3.0/3.1. For USB 3.2 the USB-A connector is dropped. 

The USB-C connector duplicates all connections on each side of the plug/socket for 3.0 and 3.1 to enable it to be inserted either way round, but on USB 3.2 it can utilise both sets of connectors effectively doubling the 2 transmit/receive pairs to 4 pairs.

From version USB 3.1 the USB-C port also introduced "USB Alt-Mode" which enables the USB data bus to be remapped for different protocols such as DP (Display Port), TB (Thunderbolt) and sometimes but rarely HDMI. It sends the video data over the same USB wires, just uses a different protocol.

If you have one of these connectors it will look like this. If you have the bottom one, your USB C will behave just like a USB A 3.x except for the power delivery capabilities and will not be capable of video output. It has nothing to do with the wires in the connector, just the capabilities of the controller.



If you have a USB-C with a DP icon, your GPU bus is directly available to the USB-C port and can transmit native display data over the USB cable using the DP protocol - not USB protocol. If you have the TB it will be encapsulated in the TB protocol.

Typically most USB-C ports with USB Alt-mode use the DP protocol, but this is really easy to convert to HDMI with a passive adaptor so allows for either DP or HDMI on the dock. It is less common to have HDMI over USB-C Alt-mode.

jon81uk said:

Our Dell docking stations at work come with a USB-C to USB-A converter built into the cable.

Pretty certain they work the same no matter which is used, but USB-C will power the laptop.

They do not work the same at all, USB-A has never been built with the capabilities for native video display as per the above. Instead, it uses DisplayLink technology to connect to the monitor. This is inferior to the native DP/TB video output on USB-C.

Instead, it installs a VGC (Virtual Graphics Card) on your PC which takes the native display output, discards data that hasn't changed since the last refresh and compresses it to send over the USB protocol. The dock will contain a hardware rendering device which reconstructs and then outputs the full picture pixel by pixel to the monitor.

These are terrible for watching videos and useless for gaming.

If you have the bottom type USB-C connector in the above diagram, it will also use the VGC same as USB-A.

What does all this mean for the OP?
They can't use their modern USB dock even with a USB adaptor because their laptop is USB 2.0 only and most modern docks will need a minimum of USB 3.0 - just guessing the model they have is 3.0+ only but likely.

They can actually use an old USB 2.0 DisplayLink dock from circa 2009 - 2012 but the performance will be poor and probably difficult to source.