CalDigit Thunderbolt Station Adds to Growing Ranks of Thunderbolt Docks

paulrbeers said:

A little googling for your edification...

http://appleinsider.com/articles/10...rmac_accessory_maker_over_magsafe_ipod_cables

http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/09/apple.targets.three.for.copying.magsafe.design/

http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/11/25/knockoffs.selling.for.almost.half.of.apples.price/

So basically, the magsafe connector was patented by Apple and creating any clone of it without licensing (which I am not sure Apple has licensed it to anyone) results in a lawsuit.

Click to expand...

I get it. I know that Apple has voraciously defended their patent on the magsafe power cord, as they should, since it's a pretty cool design, and one that nobody thought of first. But again, there is no patent on pinning out a power connection. Someone could design a dock that provided power to a MacBook via a male connection without using a magnetic connector. Essentially all that would have to happen is that the MB slid in against the power supply. No magsafe or Apple brick needed.

HurryKayne said:

HDMI IN?
If its true ITS MINE!!!!

P.s.
Can i dock my Xbox and see it on my iMAC?

Click to expand...

How? you wanna see the Xbox' hard drive? or something else?

looks very neat. Does this station work with USB 3.0 hub?

rdlink said:

I get it. I know that Apple has voraciously defended their patent on the magsafe power cord, as they should, since it's a pretty cool design, and one that nobody thought of first. But again, there is no patent on pinning out a power connection. Someone could design a dock that provided power to a MacBook via a male connection without using a magnetic connector. Essentially all that would have to happen is that the MB slid in against the power supply. No magsafe or Apple brick needed.

Click to expand...

The MagSafe plug isn't just pins and a magnet -- there's actually a small chip onboard. It controls the LED at least, but may be required for charging -- e.g., the auto/airline adapter won't charge the laptop even if the desktop charger voltage is applied to it.

carestudio said:

How? you wanna see the Xbox' hard drive? or something else?

Click to expand...

I wanna use my IMac Display to play my Xbox Games...but this is not allowed by Apple...

theluggage said:

Sounds reasonable - but I'd want to see it confirmed in practice that merely having the HDMI port doesn't eat the available video signal. I'm wondering why Belkin dropped the HDMI port from their vapourhub and why Matrox dock has HDMI or DVI but no Thunderbolt out.

Click to expand...

Well, Belkin probably realized that they could save a couple bucks if they ever decide to produce their dock, and besides, they'd be glad to sell you one of their swanky little mini DP to HDMI adapters for an additional $34.99. 2-port Thunderbolt devices typically carry a $100 retail premium over single port devices due to the increased BOM cost and complexity, which is pretty clearly why Matrox did what they did. A lot of this has to do with the 10 chips it takes to convert the single DisplayPort output to DP++, split it, and then feed it back into the Thunderbolt controller just in case anyone happens to plug a display into one of the ports.

Here's a photo of the board from a LaCie Thunderbolt Little Big Disk from a teardown performed by ender21:


The Thunderbolt controller is the big one under the thermal pad, the Marvell SATA controller is over on the left hand side of the board, and then the 10 other prominent chips are all just to deal with DisplayPort output.

snoozy355 said:

...If CalDigit uses a GPU/PCIe to run the HDMI port then this means we can still connect a DisplayPort monitor/adaptor into the TB chain and run another monitor.

As for DisplayLink/USB3 - would rather the GPU option than using a USB3 solution to drive the external monitor

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, I can guarantee you that there is no discrete GPU in that dock.

rdlink said:

I get it. I know that Apple has voraciously defended their patent on the magsafe power cord, as they should, since it's a pretty cool design, and one that nobody thought of first. But again, there is no patent on pinning out a power connection. Someone could design a dock that provided power to a MacBook via a male connection without using a magnetic connector. Essentially all that would have to happen is that the MB slid in against the power supply. No magsafe or Apple brick needed.

Click to expand...

The center pin of a MagSafe connector transmits data before allowing charging to happen, and every power adapter has a serialized EPROM in it. This is Apple we're talking about... You didn't really think they'd make it that easy did you?

Actually it's your understanding that's wrong...

rdlink said:

So disappointing. Every time I see a link to a story about a "new dock" then click on it only to find a hub I am sad. A dock is something that you can plug your laptop into, and have the peripherals automatically connect, and power automatically fed to it. It should hold the laptop as well.

Click to expand...

No, this is a dock. A Hub is a passive device. There are hubs that have some power applied so that they can act as repeaters too, but these would still be considered "passive." This is NOT passive. This has a media converter (Thunderbolt to ethernet). It has an onboard bus for the individual ports to connect. It HAS to have a bus for the USB ports. So honestly, it's your understanding of the equipment that is flawed, not the designator used to identify it.

kd5jos said:

No, this is a dock. A Hub is a passive device. There are hubs that have some power applied so that they can act as repeaters too, but these would still be considered "passive." This is NOT passive. This has a media converter (Thunderbolt to ethernet). It has an onboard bus for the individual ports to connect. It HAS to have a bus for the USB ports. So honestly, it's your understanding of the equipment that is flawed, not the designator used to identify it.

Click to expand...

No, I am correct. If it were a dock, you would "dock" your computer to it. Instead, it plugs into the computer. It's a plug-in hub. Sorry.

Hub should have the same interface for both in and out. For example, USB hub. If you mix different interfaces, it should call something else. Probably not a "dock". thunderbolt is just a very odd technology that allows you use different interfaces through it. An "expansion dock" might work better.
Some good pictures shot from the show by some one. Is it a dock or hub? or switch? expansion? station? who cares! no one would say NO to such multiport thunderbolt station.
http://www.thunderbolt4mac.com/caldigit-thunderbolt-station.htm
good shots.

rdlink said:

No, I am correct. If it were a dock, you would "dock" your computer to it.

Click to expand...

No, you are BOTH wrong.

What we have here - as anybody who remembers the Good Old Days should know is an Expansion Interface.

Like this

Or this.

Or maybe this or this - but they do look a bit like docks.


Kids today. GET ORF MY LAWN!

theluggage said:

No, you are BOTH wrong.

What we have here - as anybody who remembers the Good Old Days should know is an Expansion Interface.

Like this

Click to expand...

Ha! That was part of my very first computer. With the extra 16K and a floppy disk drive, I was really the boss for a while there.

Elwe said:

http://www.caldigit.com/thunderboltstation/ThunderboltStation.html

Unless the specs are wrong on their product page, they did make all three USB 3.0. Even with no additional ports (FW400/FW800, eSATA, VGA) this is probably the best Thunderbolt dock that is (about to be) on the market given the cost. If it turns out this works with simple, low-cost USB 2.0/3.0 adapters for the other ports, I hope they planned on making a lot. Otherwise, this is going to be "sold out" for quite some time.

Click to expand...

Agree. The price is low enough and to add a FireWire port, one can simply get the Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter downstream from this caldigit thunderbolt station. 29 dollars only.

http://www.thunderbolt4mac.com/caldigit-thunderbolt-station.htm

it shows two thunderbolt ports, so must be capable to do daisy chain.

Wish they could make one that could hold an expansion card

I have a ultrawide fast scsi RAID tower that needs a SCSI port. Unfortunately, I'm told there is no way to make a Thunderbolt expansion box that can hold an expansion card that would allow me to use this device with my Macbook Pro Retina. Too bad.

I just want a Thunderbolt to USB3 Adapter. I would be happy with that!

DrStern said:

I have a ultrawide fast scsi RAID tower that needs a SCSI port. Unfortunately, I'm told there is no way to make a Thunderbolt expansion box that can hold an expansion card that would allow me to use this device with my Macbook Pro Retina. Too bad.

Click to expand...

you need the thunderbolt exp box like this
http://www.thunderbolt4mac.com/expansion/

Imac Sam said:

I just want a Thunderbolt to USB3 Adapter. I would be happy with that!

Click to expand...

me too. Nice to have gigabit network for my air too!

best yet

Add me to the list of those impatiently waiting for this to get released.

I've got a current-gen 13" MBA and an older 30" Apple Cinema Display, with a Thunderbolt to dual-link DVI converter, which works fine, except that precludes the use of my Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter at the same time (I've got a GigE backbone, and WiFi is just too slow for transfer to the GigE NAS devices, among other things). Since this dock has GigE built-in, that would solve my problem nicely.

Does anyone know how the MBA internally handles traffic between the built-in USB3 controller and Thunderbolt? I'm guessing the best bet might be to keep existing USB3 drives where they are now -- off a USB3 hub from one of the built-in USB3 ports, and avoid using the USB3 ports on the dock. Maybe I'm not giving enough credit to the real-world performance of Thunderbolt, but I'm leery of saturation when driving the 30" display at 2560x1600, plus GigE, plus several fast USB3 drives -- seems better to keep data paths separate if possible. I'll probably run some tests and see how it looks either way.

chelidon said:

Add me to the list of those impatiently waiting for this to get released.

I've got a current-gen 13" MBA and an older 30" Apple Cinema Display, with a Thunderbolt to dual-link DVI converter, which works fine, except that precludes the use of my Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter at the same time (I've got a GigE backbone, and WiFi is just too slow for transfer to the GigE NAS devices, among other things). Since this dock has GigE built-in, that would solve my problem nicely.

Does anyone know how the MBA internally handles traffic between the built-in USB3 controller and Thunderbolt? I'm guessing the best bet might be to keep existing USB3 drives where they are now -- off a USB3 hub from one of the built-in USB3 ports, and avoid using the USB3 ports on the dock. Maybe I'm not giving enough credit to the real-world performance of Thunderbolt, but I'm leery of saturation when driving the 30" display at 2560x1600, plus GigE, plus several fast USB3 drives -- seems better to keep data paths separate if possible. I'll probably run some tests and see how it looks either way.

Click to expand...

so the guy from the show saying the usb 3 can do 400MB per second, http://www.thunderbolt4mac.com/caldigit/thunderbolt-station/index.asp?C=1
which I think it's only less half of what Thunderbolt can do thus adding gigabit ethernet should take no effects.

chelidon said:

Maybe I'm not giving enough credit to the real-world performance of Thunderbolt, but I'm leery of saturation when driving the 30" display at 2560x1600, plus GigE, plus several fast USB3 drives -- seems better to keep data paths separate if possible. I'll probably run some tests and see how it looks either way.

Click to expand...

You aren't giving enough credit. With 10gb/s worth of bandwidth, the USB 3.0 would only use half even if maxed. Even maxing the gb ethernet you are only at 6gb/s out of 10. Further, the video is a separate signal altogether that is muxed in with the data streams. Therefore, using any display with Thunderbolt would have no affect on your data streams. Your best bet is to put everything on the hub and forget about it.

Does not do dual video out

MacRumors said:

[url=http://cdn.macrumors.com/im/macrumorsthreadlogodarkd.png]Image[/url]

Storage maker CalDigit this week announced a new portable dock called the CalDigit Thunderbolt Station, adding to the growing collection of Thunderbolt docks introduced recently from Sonnet, Belkin and Matrox.

CalDigit's entry costs $199 and provides users with USB 3.0, Audio In and Out jacks, Ethernet, and HDMI in a portable aluminum case.

Image​

CalDigit makes a number of high-end storage enclosures and expansion cards for audio and video professionals. The company says the Thunderbolt Station will be "available soon".

Article Link: CalDigit Thunderbolt Station Adds to Growing Ranks of Thunderbolt Docks

Click to expand...

I was hugely intrigued by this as it appeared to be the first of the many thunderbolt docks that could do dual video out… via one of the two thunderbolt ports, the other over HDMI. Unfortunately, it does not unless one of the display is a native thunderbolt display (ie: an Apple display). If you have two DVI or HDMI monitors hooked up, you'll only get a display on the HDMI one according to the CalDigit rep. I reached out the vendor for a demo unit when available and this was the exchange:


Basically, this means there are still no thunderbolt based docks that do dual video out. Only the USB 3 dock from Kensington appears to… of course that doesn't do you much good if you have an older MBP or other Mac that has a single thunderbolt port, but no USB3.

What gets me is that the bandwidth for thunderbolt is better than that of USB 3. So why is it that every thunderbolt dock available only does a single display out but the USB 3 dock from Kensington can do dual?

Supp0rtLinux said:

Basically, this means there are still no thunderbolt based docks that do dual video out. Only the USB 3 dock from Kensington appears to… of course that doesn't do you much good if you have an older MBP or other Mac that has a single thunderbolt port, but no USB3.

Click to expand...

http://www.kensington.com/kensingto...n-with-dual-dvi-hdmi-vga-video-(sd3500v).aspx
This dock uses DisplayLink chipset.

1) It only supports resolution up 2048x1152
2) It is going to be laggy.
3) Repeat, It is going to be laggy.
It used Displaylink which is basically a low end USB graphics card that can barely play 720p video. Playing 1080p will take up 40-60% of your CPU.
Moving windows, apps around will stutter.
4) The drivers for the ethernet is buggy and Alpha.


Thunderbolt uses the native GPU output. So whatever capabilities your GPU has, it will simply output it.
You can go up to 2560x1600.

I have several of these "displaylink" dongles and I want to get away from it.
In fact, if you want to replicate the Kensington dock, you can buy a 4-7 port USB 3.0 hub and buy individual displaylink and usb 3 gigabit for less than $100.

So if more monitors is a big deal, buy a $40 USB 3.0 HDMI Displaylink dongle. It may even haver a newer revision DL-3XXX chipset than the Kensington.
Here is one on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Uspeed-Multip...1366318476&sr=8-1&keywords=anker+USB+3.0+hdmi

You plug this into any of the newish Thunderbolt's dock as well.

paulrbeers said:

Your best bet is to put everything on the hub and forget about it.

Click to expand...

that is exactly what I want! better cabling management. Caldigit now is just opening up a waiting list! let see how soon we all can get this toy!
http://www.caldigit.com/register/waitlist.asp?PID=CalDigit Thunderbolt Station

russellfko said:

that is exactly what I want! better cabling management. Caldigit now is just opening up a waiting list! let see how soon we all can get this toy!
http://www.caldigit.com/register/waitlist.asp?PID=CalDigit Thunderbolt Station

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. Need to save up now for this upgrade.

russellfko said:

that is exactly what I want! better cabling management. Caldigit now is just opening up a waiting list! let see how soon we all can get this toy!
http://www.caldigit.com/register/waitlist.asp?PID=CalDigit Thunderbolt Station

Click to expand...

I'm in

Supp0rtLinux said:

I was hugely intrigued by this as it appeared to be the first of the many thunderbolt docks that could do dual video out… via one of the two thunderbolt ports, the other over HDMI. Unfortunately, it does not unless one of the display is a native thunderbolt display (ie: an Apple display). If you have two DVI or HDMI monitors hooked up, you'll only get a display on the HDMI one according to the CalDigit rep. I reached out the vendor for a demo unit when available and this was the exchange:

Okay, thanks for the explanation. We would still be very interested in a demo unit when one is available. My shipping address is in my original email.

Thanks,
-----
<redacted>
Linux/UNIX Systems Administrator
Office: <redacted>
Mobile: <redacted>

On Apr 17, 2013, at 3:45 PM, <redacted> <<redacted>@caldigit.com>
wrote:

You can use a HDMI or DVI monitor using a thunderbolt adaptor but you won't be able to use an HDMI monitor via the HDMI port on the Thunderbolt Station. It would have to be one or the other. Only a Thunderbolt display would let you use both at the same time.

Best Regards,
<redacted>
CalDigit Inc. | Business Development
Phone: <redacted>
Fax: <redacted>
Skype: <redacted>
Email: <redacted>@caldigit.com

http://www.caldigit.com


On Apr 17, 2013, at 12:34 PM, <redacted> wrote:

Thank you for your reply. So to be clear, I can run a standard monitor off the HDMI port (and even using an HDMI to DVI or HDMI to VGA adaptor). However, for the thunderbolt port, it must be a thunderbolt equipped monitor (such as an Apple display). I cannot plug a mini-display port to DVI adaptor into it and get video through this as well? In other words, I can't use a HDMI or DVI monitor off the thunderbolt port, correct?
-----
<redacted>
Linux/UNIX Systems Administrator
Office: <redacted>
Mobile: <redacted>

On Apr 17, 2013, at 3:27 PM, <redacted> <<redacted>@caldigit.com<mailto:<redacted>@caldigit.com>> wrote:

Hi <redacted>,

The Thunderbolt Stations are currently not available, we are working on rolling them out as soon as possible. I will make sure to contact you when we have them available. Also, the dual monitor output only works if one of the monitors are a Thunderbolt monitor, not a monitor using a mini display port. If you connect a monitor using a mini display port and a HDMI monitor, only the HDMI monitor will receive the output signal. We are currently testing the hub and will publish more specific details when it becomes available.

Best Regards,
<redacted>
CalDigit Inc. | Business Development
Phone: <redacted>
Fax: <redacted>
Skype: <redacted>
Email: <redacted>@caldigit.com<mailto:<redacted>@caldigit.com>

www.caldigit.com<http://www.caldigit.com/>

On Apr 17, 2013, at 6:45 AM, <redacted> wrote:

I'm a senior member of the IT staff at <redacted> in <redacted>, NC. I am one of the team members responsible for demoing equipment that may eventually be rolled out to our IT staff (over 400 employees) and/or the <redacted> at large (over 15K employees). Specifically, as one of the senior UNIX admins, I test much of the Mac-based equipment we are interested in rolling out to our <redacted> staff. We have well over 500 MacBook Pros that are all the generation immediately prior to the retina MBP. Each has only a single thunderbolt port and no USB 3.0 support. However, most need to drive two monitors as separate displays (not a single, spanned widescreen display) and would benefit from USB 3. Your dock appears to be the only one on the market (or soon to be) that can give us dual video out (via one of the two thunderbolt ports and the HDMI port) to separate displays. I'm curious if its possible for us to get a demo unit to test out for 30-60 days?

Thanks,
-----
<redacted>
Linux/UNIX Systems Administrator
<redacted>
Office: <redacted>
Mobile: <redacted>
Mail: <redacted>
<redacted>​

Basically, this means there are still no thunderbolt based docks that do dual video out. Only the USB 3 dock from Kensington appears to… of course that doesn't do you much good if you have an older MBP or other Mac that has a single thunderbolt port, but no USB3.

What gets me is that the bandwidth for thunderbolt is better than that of USB 3. So why is it that every thunderbolt dock available only does a single display out but the USB 3 dock from Kensington can do dual?

Click to expand...

I'm confused. If I am using a single external monitor, can I use a mini-displayport to displayport cable from the Thunderbolt Port, or am I restricted to using the HDMI out?

I'm not intending to use dual monitors (although that would be useful) but it would be nice to know whether I'll have to swap to using the HDMI in on the monitor.