tonymacx86's Skylake Thunderbolt 3 Test Build: GA-Z170X-UD5-TH - i5-6600K

[joevt]

Thanks. Is there something I can do if they're not showing up? I wonder why the apollo showed up but the quantum won't...

Can you get it to show up in Windows, then post your Clover boot log after restarting into macOS?

 

[jdlux]

Forgive my ignorance, is this (attached)what you mean?


the quantum is showing up consistently in windows now


just to try something, in peripherals>thunderbolt boot support

I changed "disabled" to enabled

but that didn't change anything

 

[jdlux]

or is it one of these?

 

[joevt]

or is it one of these?

Yes, one of those. The EFI Shell. Use the pci command in the EFI Shell to get a list of devices. The EFI Shell works like the Windows command app or macOS Terminal.app. You can pipe the output to a file like this: "pci > pci.txt" but only if the file system is a FAT file system, such as the EFI partition. Use the "alias" command to get a list of file systems. Try them one at a time to find the file system containing your EFI folder. Start with "fs0:", then "fs1:", etc. For each, type "ls" to get a list of files on that filesystem to make sure it's the EFI partition. You can type "help" for more information on the commands.

You can skip all that and just look at the PCI devices that Clover finds and outputs to the boot log. The clover boot log is in the /EFI/Clover/misc folder of the EFI partition.

If you see the quantum device there, then you should also see it in macOS. Use the "ioreg -l -w0 > ioreg.txt" to dump your ioregistry.

If the quantum device is in the ioregistry, then the quantum drivers should be able to attach to that. Capture the output from "kextstat > kextstat.txt"

If there is no attached kext, then you'll want to check the kext's info.plist to figure out why it's not matching. Try a verbose kextload. Check the system log for messages originating from the kext.

 

[zipb]

Looks like Gigabyte has updated the Thunderbolt firmwares for Z170x motherboards? There's a 21 for the UD5 and my Gaming 7. I'll try that out today.

And? Did upgrading work? What's new with this version?

 

[zipb]

Looks like Gigabyte has updated the Thunderbolt firmwares for Z170x motherboards? There's a 21 for the UD5 and my Gaming 7. I'll try that out today.

I just had a look at the gigabyte site, I don't see any TB firmware > 16... Where did you find 21?

 

[joevt]

And? Did upgrading work? What's new with this version?

I did the upgrade. Thunderbolt NVM Firmware version is now 21.00. External GPUs supported = Yes. You need to make sure the FlashTBT folder (in C:\Program Files (x86)\GIGABYTE) contains only the rev21 bin file. There are no publicly available release notes about NVM versions. There are release notes for some of the Intel Thunderbolt drivers though. Read more info (or an explanation of how annoying Intel is for letting manufacturers control the firmware updates) at
https://communities.intel.com/thread/111547

I also did a BIOS firmware update to f22i. You need to redo some BIOS settings like USB hand off, and the EFI boot list whenever you do a BIOS update.

I also did a macOS update to 10.13.2. You need to install the latest Lilu kexts first as usual. Then install latest Nvidia drivers after restart.

I don't think the NVM update has any affect on macOS support, since we're really not use Thunderbolt drivers on Hackintosh yet.

There is a note in that thread that the Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter requires at least NVM 18, but I don't think I had any trouble with NVM 16 (my previous NVM version for my motherboard).

I just had a look at the gigabyte site, I don't see any TB firmware > 16... Where did you find 21?

Go to your motherboard website, select Support, Downloads, Windows 10 64bit, Utility, Thunderbolt FW Update Tool. It says "Firmware 21+ TI 1.7.6"
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z170X-Gaming-7-rev-10#support-dl
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z170X-UD5-TH-rev-10#support-dl

 

[zipb]

Hi Joe,

Thanks. Really hard to find. It still says version 16 in the Version column.... Anyway, if it doesn't change anything for OSX, I will leave it for now. I'm reluctant to upgrade my BIOS, as my Hack is working really well. Unless you/someone else finds anything really compelling...

 

[zipb]

I did the upgrade. Thunderbolt NVM Firmware version is now 21.00. External GPUs supported = Yes. You need to make sure the FlashTBT folder (in C:\Program Files (x86)\GIGABYTE) contains only the rev21 bin file. There are no publicly available release notes about NVM versions. There are release notes for some of the Intel Thunderbolt drivers though. Read more info (or an explanation of how annoying Intel is for letting manufacturers control the firmware updates) at
https://communities.intel.com/thread/111547
...

Well. TB3 is a mess, even Intel has no idea what's happening exactly. Latest TB fw is really hard to find, unclear what is new or fixed, horrible.
I'm also not seeing a more widespread implementation of TB. The future of TB is not looking bright

 

[joevt]

Hi Joe,

Thanks. Really hard to find. It still says version 16 in the Version column.... Anyway, if it doesn't change anything for OSX, I will leave it for now. I'm reluctant to upgrade my BIOS, as my Hack is working really well. Unless you/someone else finds anything really compelling...

Well, the motherboard BIOS fixes Intel ME vulnerabilities. The Thunderbolt BIOS may add compatibility with new devices and have other improvements.

Well. TB3 is a mess, even Intel has no idea what's happening exactly. Latest TB fw is really hard to find, unclear what is new or fixed, horrible.
I'm also not seeing a more widespread implementation of TB. The future of TB is not looking bright

Thunderbolt is not going away. In 2018, it may appear in CPUs, other manufacturers may start making Thunderbolt chips, royalty fees will go away, DisplayPort 1.4 will be supported, etc.

Firmware update issues are almost a non-issue, since we don't even know why we want those updates. Thunderbolt generally just works (when the BIOS and hardware and software are designed to work together, unlike in Hackintosh).