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Keez

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 5, 2019
2
0
Sydney
Hello all.

I need a bit of help to setup my office workstation.
I'm fairly useful when it comes to technology, but my proposed setup may need someone with more knowledge than I to set up. I need help selecting an appropriate Thunderbolt drive and docking station to effectively connect my office workstations, with the primariy goal of reducing duplication, power consumption and cable clutter..

Basically, these are the workstations I'd like to accommodate:
1) Mac Mini 2018 (yet to be purchased)
2) Windows 7 workstation (mATX)
3) Microsoft Surface (to be connected and disconnected on the go)

Gear I Have already:
Mac mini 2012 (to be replaced with 2018 model)
2 x Dell displays with HDMI, Display Port, DVI (currently running 1920x1200 resolution)
Windows 7 workstation (used occassionally)
Targus Dock 110 (currently used for the Surface, connects to Surface via USB only - would prefer to utilise this in the new setup)
Heaps of wired keyboards
Bluetooth mouse
Speakers
Apple Base Station

Gear I need to buy:
a) Thunderbolt hard drive (one drive should be enough but 2 may be handy for backup) primarily for Workstation 1 as the mac mini 2018 only has flash storage.
b) Docking station of some sort to allow everything to be connected to the one wired keyboard and one bluetooth mouse and one set of speakers. Also, wired connection to the internet is required for the mac mini and windows workstation.
c) Mac Mini 2018
d) Various cables and adapters
e) Would prefer it if somehow I can connect the surface to both monitors, but one would be sufficient. The Targus Dock 110 only supports on monitor.

I may also need to buy an thunderbolt eGPU at a later stage for the Mac Mini 2018. The mac mini is my primary machine and is used to drive my architectural software (Vectorworks). I guess the eGPU can connect directly to the mini as the mini has four TB ports.

All of the workstations will need access to the internet.

Any suggestions on what gear I need to buy to reduce the deplorable amount of cables on my desk at the moment would be really appreciated!
 
Last edited:
I've since discovered Multi Stream Transport (MST) which basically allows two monitors to be daisy chained together and connect to one port of the KVW switch, allowing them to work either in extended or mirror mode from one display port output (monitor and graphics card must be display port 1.2 compatible for this to work.)
I think the KVM switch also has to be MST compatible for this to work though - I'm waiting for a reply to an email to confirm if this is the case.
This is a nice find for me because here I am looking for a KVM switch that has two video outputs on the console side. :)
So it looks like a 4 port KVM switch is sort of what I need.
Now I need to figure how the mac and windows workstation will access an external thunderbolt drive...

Edit:
Seems a KVM switch is a part of the solution, not a docking station.
 
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