Success with Asus ThunderboltEX 3 and Z370 and UAD Apollo

[Laszlo]

Breaking it down a littler here.

As far having OS recognizing thunderbolt goes it simply won't do that. It will however, if booted with the Apollo already on and OS restarted after said boot (I know I know its weird but its the truth), show up as an audio device and work 100 percent normal. The good people here are working on that now.

So I never had to messed with any of the thunderbolt kext and my goal for my build (identical besides the GTX) was to be as plug and play as possible. Clearly your card works and your OS boot isn't hanging up. Have you matched my Thunderbolt bios settings and did a good unplug, boot, restart all with the Apollo on?

I got the idea from another thread to delete the AppleThunderbolt kexts, as it made it work for the poster then. Not for me, I can't get them reinstalled either, strangely.

But, your method works! I have made sure that the BIOS settings are OK, restarted, restarted again and now the UAD software does make a connection to the Apollo-8, the UAD plug-ins are also showing up as normal.

Quite remarkably, the system does not show any Thunderbolt drivers, nor a PCI item for the Apollo, but the UAD Control Panel sees the hardware, just like under Windows. Now I will proceed to see if I can get ProTools also working... will keep you posted on progress.

 

[NorthAmTransAm]

Yeah its actually kind of a mind screwup that it works. It's the only part of my system that feels "hacky" tbh. Well I guess occasionally iMessage will start randomly using SMS handoff but that could be an issue with shitty wifi. You'll notice every "issue" people have with Pro Tools is a non issue for you. Very rarely do I have any errors. 100-150 tracks, big plugs, UAD maxed. It's wonderful.

Side note: I heard if you use a thunderbolt dock you can hot swap but that's a diminishing return $$$ unless you actually need it.

 

[Drummelstel]

Hi,
I installed a NVMe SSD with OSX Mojave. I Installed another one with Windows 10. I Followed all your steps @NorthAmTransAm and have the same bios settings. When I want to install the Thunderbolt update installer in Windows I got the following message.

Forcing power to the Thunderbolt controller(s)...
The Thunderbolt controller(s) is now powered.
Current NVM version = 26
Specified file (.dat) doesn't exist

Please click the "Cancel" button to finish the tool.

But the chip1_Fw.dat file and the tbFirmware.bin are there in the folder. Really strange...

My UAD Apollo Twin MK2 is already recognized in Windows by the Thunderbolt software. I didn't install the UAD software yet. But when I'm booting to OSX the UAD Apollo isn't recognized.

So is that firmware update is necessary? The rest of my Hackintosh work fine, only the Thunderbolt is really a pain in the ass. Can someone help me with this please?

 

[NorthAmTransAm]

Hi,
I installed a NVMe SSD with OSX Mojave. I Installed another one with Windows 10. I Followed all your steps @NorthAmTransAm and have the same bios settings. When I want to install the Thunderbolt update installer in Windows I got the following message.

Forcing power to the Thunderbolt controller(s)...
The Thunderbolt controller(s) is now powered.
Current NVM version = 26
Specified file (.dat) doesn't exist

Please click the "Cancel" button to finish the tool.

But the chip1_Fw.dat file and the tbFirmware.bin are there in the folder. Really strange...

My UAD Apollo Twin MK2 is already recognized in Windows by the Thunderbolt software. I didn't install the UAD software yet. But when I'm booting to OSX the UAD Apollo isn't recognized.

So is that firmware update is necessary? The rest of my Hackintosh work fine, only the Thunderbolt is really a pain in the ass. Can someone help me with this please?

Interesting. Have you tried unplugging your computer for around 15 seconds, power up the UAD fully, then booting, then restarting?

I never encountered that error.

A bit of an update: I cleaned up system quite a bit and made sure I didn't have any redundant Kext or drivers installed. WEG/Lilu really make that easy. I later made a custom SSDT for my USB ports following a @RehabMan thread that cleared up any issues with the USB port on the EX3 card.

 

[Il.F]

Hi,
I installed a NVMe SSD with OSX Mojave. I Installed another one with Windows 10. I Followed all your steps @NorthAmTransAm and have the same bios settings. When I want to install the Thunderbolt update installer in Windows I got the following message.

Forcing power to the Thunderbolt controller(s)...
The Thunderbolt controller(s) is now powered.
Current NVM version = 26
Specified file (.dat) doesn't exist

Please click the "Cancel" button to finish the tool.

But the chip1_Fw.dat file and the tbFirmware.bin are there in the folder. Really strange...

My UAD Apollo Twin MK2 is already recognized in Windows by the Thunderbolt software. I didn't install the UAD software yet. But when I'm booting to OSX the UAD Apollo isn't recognized.

So is that firmware update is necessary? The rest of my Hackintosh work fine, only the Thunderbolt is really a pain in the ass. Can someone help me with this please?

Hey,
"Current NVM version = 26" means that you have the ThundeboltEX 3 with 15D2 chip version.
The chip1_Fw.dat file is for 1577 chip version.
15D2 requires the chip2_Fw.dat file that is missed in the zip on the ASUS site.
I have two new ThundeboltEX 3 controllers (for the upcoming builds) both with 15D2 and can't get it working under macOS, although both controllers are working on Windows.

 

[subsonikz]

Forcing power to the Thunderbolt controller(s)...
The Thunderbolt controller(s) is now powered.
Current NVM version = 26
Specified file (.dat) doesn't exist

pretty sure your card is up to date. that's what mine says when i try to run the firmware update, and mine is working fine with the same board

 

[subsonikz]

make sure card is in bottom slot and correctly set location in bios

aic location group > sb pcie slot
aic location > pciex16_3

 

[dannic]

Hello,
How did you get to update your card? i get this all the time:
Specified file (.dat) doesn't exist.

if i look at the .config file in the updater folder I see that there should be two .dat files, and i get one. Not to mention that i did not even have the.bin file and i found it on a forum.

i have no ideea what to do, as it works fine on windows but i cannot get it to work on mac.

 

[dannic]

No worries, I bought a gigabyte card and all is solved.

 

[NorthAmTransAm]

No worries, I bought a gigabyte card and all is solved.

Did you have to buy a special header cable?