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steelsam's theory of Thunderbolt functionality on GA-Z87X-UD5-TH (and other TB boards?)

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GA-Z87X-UD5-TH
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i7-4770K
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EVGA GTX 760 SC
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I've been trying to get the Thunderbolt ports working on my Z87X-UD5-TH for about a week and I think I've come across something worth sharing.

A few months ago, I built a Hackintosh using the Z77X-UP4-TH and it has fully functioning TB ports (no hot swap as usual). What was interesting though, is that OSX didn't recognize those ports as Thunderbolt. Instead, it seemed that they showed up as "dumb" PCIE bridges only. Storage devices would show up as internal. I could still daisy chain devices and such, I even set up a RAID 1 through chaining TB cables. Upon further digging, I still couldn't find Thunderbolt showing up anywhere in OSX when using TB devices. Kext Wizard showed no Thunderbolt kexts loaded and the IO device tree showed the connection as PCIE bridges - no mention of TB.

When I went to set up my Z87X-UD5-TH (running 10.8.5), I could not get Thunderbolt working despite my many attempts. Changed BIOS settings, installed different kexts, etc. What I did notice is that when TB devices were connected, although they wouldn't mount, 2 Thunderbolt kexts would load and the device tree listed a Thunderbolt connection (although no device at the end of the connection).

I started comparing my UP4 & UD5 systems to see if I could find why one system wasn't recognizing TB but the ports were working and the other was recognizing TB but the ports were useless pieces of crap. By process of elimination, I ended up coming to the fact that the UP4 system had a Windows 7 drive installed and the UD5 did not. That wouldn't ****in' matter would it? Oh but I think it does...

In my semi delirious state of sheer anger towards the inanimate object before me, I decided to give it a whirl. I found an old ass HDD (5400rpm SATA 2), placed it in my case's drive bay, and installed Windows 7 on it. When I booted into Windows, with a Seagate Thunderbolt Drive attached, the OS recognized a series of PCIE bridges. I restarted into OSX and la dee freakin' da, there was my drive sitting on the desktop. I restarted a couple times straight into OSX and the TB drive still mounted. I copied some files over to the drive in order to test functionality and it worked.

When I looked at the IO device tree on my UD5, it showed the Thunderbolt drive in the same manner as my UP4. No mention of TB - just PCIE bridges. Success!

Is there is anyone out there that has Thunderbolt working on any board that only has Mac OSX installed (i.e. no other OS installation on any drive - ever)? If not, then this may be the reason some people are able to obtain TB functionality and others are not. Even with similar set ups. I'll do my best to answer questions and update this thread as I find out more.

NOTE: I did all this testing late last night and got pretty tired. Therefore, I don't want to say this is a cure all - I'll need to experiment more with its functionality and there may be further developments. Right now, it's just a theory.
 
Wow. That is weeeeeird.

As I think I want a windows partition on this system anyway... I will look into this over the weekend.
 
Hey,
thanks a lot for sharing that. I also did a lot of testing to get Thunderbolt working, had to reset my bios lots of times, did this and that, but who would have thought that.
Windows makes OS X work. Strange.
Did you check what happens when you disconnect the windows drive and start in os x? Is it still working?
 
I have not tried disconnecting the Windows drive yet - that would be interesting to see what happens. I've got an 850W power supply though so I'm not sure I will test that out as it's not consuming much resources.
 
That's awesome that you got it to work. I have a windows partition and I tried this method. I went into windows 8 and if i went into disk manager (or whatever that is called) it showed that it could see the drive. I wasn't able to see it. I have a DROBO 5D with thunderbolt.

When I went back into Mavericks it did not show up with the thunderbolt. Was there anything that you did to the drive before restarting?
 
That's awesome that you got it to work. I have a windows partition and I tried this method. I went into windows 8 and if i went into disk manager (or whatever that is called) it showed that it could see the drive. I wasn't able to see it. I have a DROBO 5D with thunderbolt.

When I went back into Mavericks it did not show up with the thunderbolt. Was there anything that you did to the drive before restarting?

I'm not really sure what you're saying here. Are you saying Windows recognized the drive through PCIE bridges or not? Because you also say that you weren't able to see it.

For one thing, I'm using ML - not Mavericks and Windows 7 - not Windows 8. Although, some folks have reported they got TB working this way and they are running Mavericks so that really shouldn't be the problem.

I didn't do anything to the drive while I restarted. I just left it plugged in and rebooted into OSX.
 
Hi everybody I am newbie in the forum an I hope that helps to another Hackintosh users, a new piece of evidence about the Thunderbolt mistery.

My Hackintosh have the following configuration:
Motherboard: GA-Z87X-UD5-TH
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5Ghz Box Socket 1150 HaswellHDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 2TB SATA3 64MB / Samsung 840 Evo SSD Series 250GB SATA3
RAM Memory G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 1866 PC3-14900 16GB 2x8GB CL9
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 3GB GDDR5
PCIe Firewire Expansion card (800/400): StarTech.com PEX1394B3


I buy that specifically for the TB ports, for the Blackmagic Intensity Extreme (BMIE) (for 10bit color correction, video input and output connected by thunderbolt). Also for postproduction and video editing.

When I start the hackintosh with the BMIE it's recognized as something like PCIe external card and it works for different apps (Final Cut, After effects and Davinci resolve) for the video output but not for input (in the system preferences, the control panel doesn't allow to change any option).

Screen Shot 2013-12-20 at 08.43.52.png

Another issue is the CUDA driver, that process of the GPU is not recognized by the apps. When I disconnect the BMIE, everithing run smoothly again.

As you said in other post I change the config in the Bios as this and load the thunderbolt Kext files from a Macbook Pro with TH:

Screening 2013-12-20 at 09.02.02.png

IMG_0356.JPG

I hope between all can found a solution.

Many thank's for your help.

Best reggards
 
As you said in other post I change the config in the Bios as this and load the thunderbolt Kext files from a Macbook Pro with TH:

View attachment 77189

View attachment 77187

I hope between all can found a solution.

Many thank's for your help.

Best reggards

I don't think I said anything about loading Thunderbolt kexts from a Macbook Pro. I removed all of those kexts from System/Library/Extensions. Also, in my BIOS, I think I have Ignore Thunderbolt Option Rom Disabled and Security Level set as Unique ID. Not sure if either of those matter but it's worth a shot.

Lastly, and potentially most important, do you have Windows installed?
 
No, i have not windows installed, do you install it in other disk or in the same as OSX?
 
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