Thunderbolt 3 Modified Firmware Custom SSDT Discussion

[genzai]

One more very important (i think) area to explore is how wide the compatibility for these flashed cards + TDROM/TCONFIG SSDT can be. I know @scottkendall has had 2 controllers working in his system, but has anyone else gotten more than one controller or more than one card working in the same system?

And of equal interest, is there any reason these cant be used on older system that did not have thunderbolt headers? for instance Z97 era. It seems like it should be OK

Thanks,
g\

 

[scottkendall]

One more very important (i think) area to explore is how wide the compatibility for these flashed cards + TDROM/TCONFIG SSDT can be. I know @scottkendall has had 2 controllers working in his system, but has anyone else gotten more than one controller or more than one card working in the same system?

And of equal interest, is there any reason these cant be used on older system that did not have thunderbolt headers? for instance Z97 era. It seems like it should be OK

Thanks,
g\

I would not say working, the second card was installed the tree populated but was not behaving properly. However, they both work well when installed singularly.

This really got a jump off when DSM2 was working to make one work in a Macpro 5.1 so the header is not completely important, though you do need to Jumper Pin 3-5 to force power. I have a header but I found with the cable attached the system did not sleep correctly.

When I placed the alpine ridge card into my z170 system it did not behaving well. I do not remember exactly what it was doing but it was not behaving correctly so I removed it.

@CaseySJ had AIC and onboard Titan Ridge working at the same time.

Yes for sure this is the reason. For some reason GC-TR, or maybe TR in general, does not have a working/available EHCI bus. That's why, unlike the AR cards, the header port is on that card and needs to be routed to a motherboard header if you want USB 2.0 available on those ports. So that is easy to fix, you just also need to make sure the port layout has those ports enabled (or patch the port limit + usbinjectall). Given how well you otherwise have this working now, this also looks like my path forward for these cards.
g\

I likely have the header enabled as part of my 15 but I really could care less if the USB 2.0 is working out of those ports. Maybe if I come across the USB2.0 cable I will plug it in.

 

[NorthAmTransAm]

@scottkendall, would you be down to try a new firmware for your card?

If so, could you help me track down the OEM firmware?

 

[qthegaijin]

@genzai Just ordered an Alpine-Ridge AIC since Amazon now isn't saying end of April for delivery. I will test that card out on my Z170X board once it arrives and see if it behaves differently!

 

[genzai]

@genzai Just ordered an Alpine-Ridge AIC since Amazon now isn't saying end of April for delivery. I will test that card out on my Z170X board once it arrives and see if it behaves differently!

also FWIW, while the z170x-designare was one of the very few boards to have both an onboard controller and a header for an AIC, at the time i was setting these up for clients, gigabyte had not enabled the AIC support in the BIOS. i had to specifically request (and received) a custom bios and then it worked. I don't know if they rolled that support into future official BIOS releases or not- i might have the only BIOS that can support an AIC on that board. That said, we now see that we might not need any BIOS support using these methods as we are no longer required to use the THB_C header and there have even been reports that turning off thunderbolt support in the BIOS still doesn't disable the cards. so it may be a mute point.

g\

 

[scottkendall]

@scottkendall, would you be down to try a new firmware for your card?

If so, could you help me track down the OEM firmware?

Not even sure where to begin to look for that:

The firmware on my alpine ridge you extracted from the Gigabyte Firmware updater and modified it, I do not even have the original that was on it.

As far as the Titian Ridge it works 100% for me and my needs, I really do not want to mess with the Titian Ridge.

 

[scottkendall]

That said, we now see that we might not need any BIOS support using these methods as we are no longer required to use the THB_C header and there have even been reports that turning off thunderbolt support in the BIOS still doesn't disable the cards. so it may be a mute point.

g\

The card for me works without the header connected but If I turn it off in the bios it does not work.

 

[genzai]

The card for me works without the header connected but If I turn it off in the bios it does not work.

Wow, very interesting- and actually quite disappointing- since this would seem to have implications for using the cards on systems that don't have thunderbolt BIOS options, and probably also for using multiple cards in a system. i know i had seen at least one or two reports of people turning off thunderbolt support in BIOS and saying the cards still functioned using the 3-5 jumper, flashed firmware and TDROM SSDT.

Now i wonder if this could be firmware related. it seems feasible for instance that maybe we would need a firmware based on a real apple firmware for this to work since BIOS may need some kind of hooks for the ICM mode or whatever it was called that intel/windows uses for device management over thunderbolt. Granted that so far i dont think any of the apple based modified firmwares have worked as well as these recent (barely modified) official firmwares have, it might still be worth testing to see if flashing multiple cards with the semi-working apple based firmwares will allow them all to work together in macOS without a BIOS component (thunderbolt disabled in bios, or on system with no thunderbolt settings available in bios, or with multiple cards in one system).

g\

 

[qthegaijin]

i might have the only BIOS that can support an AIC on that board.
g\

Able to share that bios/happen to know what revision number they modded? Wouldn't mind trying it out.

 

[genzai]

Able to share that bios/happen to know what revision number they modded? Wouldn't mind trying it out.

i don't remember v# but ya i should have the original emails, i will dig it out and post it here. actually i think i did post it on this forum back in the day but thats probably going to be hard to find so i will dig it up and post it here.

g\