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GC-ALPINE RIDGE in hands

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Apr 4, 2014
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Motherboard
GA-Z170MX-G5
CPU
i7-6700K
Graphics
GTX 980 Ti
Mac
  1. iMac
  2. MacBook
  3. MacBook Pro
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
Hi guys,

So after continuos searching and waiting and searching and waiting... I finally got the GC-ALPINE RIDGE in my hands. IMG_0822.JPG

I'm still waiting for my TB3 to TB2 dongles, but will keep this thread updated once I get them and test with my macOS setup.
Also, I assume everyone wants to know this: I was able to order this board from here: https://www.alternate.de/html/product/1306936

Cheers!
 
Very good news :)
Before ordering that add-on PCI card, have you tried activating Thunderbolt 3 over the integrrated USB-C port of your motherboard (the Gigabyte GA-Z170MX-Gaming 5 already has the Intel Alpine Ridge controller integrated) as explained in my post in another topic?
 
Not yet, still waiting for those TB3 to TB2 adapters from Apple. They're overbooked, but the recent price drop was nice. Once I'll get them I'll tryout the onboard controller too! Thanks for the idea.
 
I just received my Alpine Ridge card as well. Waiting for the same adapters. However, it is only on select boards, that the Gigabyte "upgrade" enables Thunderbolt 3.
My single USB-C port (GA-Z170MX Gaming-5), will not magically become a Thunderbolt 3-port, it will only work as a USB 3.1.
 
Alright, adapters are here! Couple of things to mention right off the bat:
1) macOS doesn't seem to see devices, even with the UEFI configured thunderbolt to legacy mode.
2) In legacy mode windows seems to still detect all attached devices and display their meta information. This is in contrast with my previous testing with the modified F4 firmware and the ASRock Thunderbolt 2 AIC card. That card worked fine in macOS, but as if the devices were connected directly to PCI.

Right now I'm using the F5e UEFI Firmware, I saw same weird behaviour with power state when I tried F20b, so just went straight with F5e this time. Maybe I'll try F20b over the coming days.

I did not try the onboard port yet, @basak I guess is saying that it won't work either way?

P.S. I wonder if anyone attempted to look into the IOThunderboltFamilly.kext and see whether it could be patched or utilised for third party controllers.
 
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Well I couldn't get it to work with 10.12.0, so I updated to 10.12.1. Got some kernel panics when it tried to load IOThunderboltFamilly.kext, but I moved it out out of /S/L/E through recovery, booted, moved it in and got it to load. (makes no sense to me too...).

Still no progress however... I can't get macOS to recognise my thunderbolt display as a TB device...
 
Also, this adapter supports only one powered Thunderbolt 2 device on a USB-C equipped Mac."

Hm, interesting. The wording is kinda confusing to me though. Are they saying that if you're using the adapter, you can daisy chain only one device?
 
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Well just to answer my own question here, it seems that both my Thunderbolt Display and my WD My Passport Pro work well daisy chained when used in Windows. So maybe Apple means strictly devices that have power supplied through thunderbolt?

Either way, I'm still pretty confused with the way macOS is trying to work with this card. I see both my hard-drive and the usb ports of the thunderbolt display show up in System Report, however neither of them are usable...
 
The adapter doesn't pass DisplayPort video. Only works for data.
I'm not sure why the USB hub would show up but not work though. That could be the card or some quirk of the adapter's DisplayPort incompatibility.
 
The adapter doesn't pass DisplayPort video. Only works for data.
I'm not sure why the USB hub would show up but not work though. That could be the card or some quirk of the adapter's DisplayPort incompatibility.

Well the adapter has full functionality when used in windows, including video, usb hub, networking (all of which are part of the thunderbolt display) and also daisy chaining. As I said, my thunderbolt display daisy-chained drive was working perfectly in windows. Also video works fine in macOS, which leads me to assume that it does have DP support in all cases.

On another note, I searched around and found that this card does have the same exact JHL6540 controller as found in the new 13" Macbook Pro (without the touchbar). Thanks to iFixit.

I heard people editing their DSDT or SSDT in order to get some older controllers to work, but those were usually part of the motherboard itself. I wonder if editing the either the DSDT or SSDT would help solve this though. I have never done this and don't know where to start, so if anyone could confirm whether this is an actual possibility or not, would be awesome.

Also... I wonder if system definitions here could also change anything.
 
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