Anyone Have Thunderbolt Working?

[seinfeld4u]

Wondering if anyone has managed to get thunderbolt working on their hackintosh and if so, what they did to get it working?

I have an Asus g751jl laptop which has a thunderbolt port but it doesn't work in OS X. I can't change the thunderbolt security option to 'legacy' in BIOS as it is not an option, is there any other way to get thunderbolt working?

 

[froglobo]

I had to make mine "alive" by installing Windows and attaching a thunderbolt drive. It works now.

 

[seinfeld4u]

Thanks for the tip. I installed windows on the same drive in UEFI after OS X in a partition and installed the Intel Thunderbolt Drivers on windows. Tiny bit of success...

• I found that if I connect a device such as the Apple Thunderbolt to Firewire Cable and connect it in Windows, then if I restart the computer and go into OS X, that particular device works fine
• but if I turn the computer off an go straight into OS X without going into windows first, it won't connect.

 

[seinfeld4u]

Is there a way around this since I can't put the thunderbolt into legacy mode in bios on my laptop?

Can I flash another BIOS onto my laptop that has thunderbolt legacy security mode or can I update the firmware of the thunderbolt chip in my laptop somehow or enable that option in bios? Asus aren't being helpful, I don't their tech support guys even know what 'legacy' security mode in thunderbolt is let alone how to mod a bios.

What do you think will happen if I try to flash the thunderbolt chip inside OS X from the apple thunderbolt update? Not work at all, or mess up windows and mess up the thunderbolt chip for good? The chip is Intel Thunderbolt 157d.

 

[seinfeld4u]

The guy in this video at the end of the video mentioned he got his thunderbolt working by copying the thunderbolt kexts from a mac with working thunderbolt:

I'd like to try this. Does anyone have a real mac with thunderbolt running El Capitan or Yosemite that wouldn't mind upload their thunderbolt kexts for this experiment?

 

[Adrian B]

The guy in this video at the end of the video mentioned he got his thunderbolt working by copying the thunderbolt kexts from a mac with working thunderbolt:

This was how you got thunderbolt running back in 2012 on a Z77X-UP5TH board. It didn't work like this for long. Now you need to actually load the Windows drivers to 'activate' the Thunderbolt hardware. Thunderbolt then works on OS X.

 

[seinfeld4u]

Thanks. Unfortunately this 'once activate by windows drivers' method doesn't work for me. I have the Intel Thunderbolt driver installed in Windows but OS X forgets this as soon as turn off the computer but if I just hit restart from windows and keep the laptop on, thunderbolt works in OS X. It's just kinda annoying having to go into windows every time before OS X to get my thunderbolt to work in OS X. Is there another trick or something I can do? I'm jealous of the guys that can just install the windows drivers once and then boot into OS X directly forever with no issues with Thunderbolt.

 

[Adrian B]

There is no magic bullet to getting Thunderbolt working flawlessly with OS X. Even on the desktops it is still not been possible to actually hot plug thunderbolt devices. Apple have actually implemented Thunderbolt a little differently for Apple hardware over how it works with PC hardware and this causes some problems when using PC hardware with OS X.
The only workable solution to fix all of the Thunderbolt issues is to use Apple hardware or consider switching to Windows if the applications are available in the Windows environment.

 

[seinfeld4u]

What do you think about trying to update the firmware of the thunderbolt chip with a flash utility from another motherboard or laptop that supports 'legacy' mode? Then perhaps it will appear in bios as legacy mode? Too risky, or worth a try?

 

[seinfeld4u]

What do you think about trying to update the firmware of the thunderbolt chip with a flash utility from another motherboard or laptop that supports 'legacy' mode? Then perhaps it will appear in bios as legacy mode? Too risky, or worth a try?

I might try first to install windows 7 instead of windows 10 as well because I found some people online that said they only got their bios options after installing the thunderbolt driver so maybe the windows 7 driver will trigger legacy mode in BIOS but the windows 8 driver won't? After all, all of the posts online were from people installing windows 7 along OSX and I couldn't find a post online where someone installed windows 8 or 10 to activate their thunderbolt in OS X but some did mention that the BIOS settings for thunderbolt only appeared after installing the windows thunderbolt driver.