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If you aren’t concerned about security, there is a good fix out there for some Thunderbolt 3 add-in cards.
Intel thunderbolt 3 admin software#
It may be possible to somehow hack the Thunderbolt software to force it to activate approved devices at boot time, but this isn’t an ideal solution. It now works.īecause your motherboard likely has no Thunderbolt support whatsoever in the UEFI, the boot time activation process is missing. We can prove this by opening up the Thunderbolt software with a non functioning device that was attached at boot time, un-approve it, and re-approve it. The problem is that it only does this on first approval and hot-plug events. When you approve the device, the Intel Thunderbolt software enables the PCIe endpoint for the peripheral in question which brings the peripheral online. You will have previously installed the Intel Thunderbolt software, seen your device in the list, and approved it, and it might have even sprung into life. Because you likely don’t have any Thunderbolt options in your UEFI setup menu, you can’t change this either. This cause of this problem is that all Thunderbolt Add-in cards by default power up at security level “SL1” which means users have to manually approve attached peripherals.
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Common Problem #2: When peripherals are connected at boot time, they’re not detectedīut if I subsequently unplug it, and plug it back in, then it works? These cards will need some more initialisation that I’ll be looking at in future. I have noticed that some (Alpine Ridge for example) cards come up with a PCI Vendor/Device ID of 0xFFFF/0xFFFF which would mean that they wouldn’t be enumerated by the system. This is likely to differ for other cards. Jumpering the GC-TITAN RIDGE into action. In some cases a separate +3.3V supply will need to be applied (via a 10K resistor for example) to the “force power” pin, which on the GC-TITAN RIDGE is pin 1. It will not necessarily work for every AIC. This modification works thanks to a weak pull-up on the input at pin 3 meaning there is +3.3V present. Pin 1 is clearly marked on the connector as being at the top of the card, and in the drawing of the connector. Note that you are actually shorting pins 1 and 3. On the Gigabyte GC-TITAN RIDGE (one of the most popular cards for Thunderbolt hacking) it is regularly reported that you can “short pins 3 and 5”. One of the pins on the mystery Thunderbolt header interface on the rear of the card is an “enable” (technically ‘force power’) signal. Common Problem #1: It doesn’t work at allĬard not detected, nor any attached devices, nada. I have spent the past few evenings trawling through many forums, reading about the many different experiences people are having, and have also purchased some hardware to play around with myself, so we can dig into these problems and see what (if any) solutions there are.
Intel thunderbolt 3 admin full#
It’s not a secret that these cards may work in a motherboard which isn’t supported, but full functionality is not a given. Apparently regular looking PCIe expansion cards, but shipped with a mystery interface cable to the motherboard, of which there is a small list of supported models. I’ve long been intrigued by Thunderbolt add-in cards. The situation is no better for Thunderbolt 4 however some technical details differ from what is written on this page. This article concerns Thunderbolt 3 add-in cards.