It's capable, but it cannot be used in a star topology.![]()
Can you even start to imagine how much a Thunderbolt hub would cost ?
It's capable, but it cannot be used in a star topology.![]()
I get what you're saying, and do agree with most parts. I dont pretend to be an expert in how HDMI works but here's what I dont get. If I drop into bootcamp running Windows or Linux (Debian) - it works fine. It's only in OS X that it cant figure out the resolution.
It's not a major issue for me as I'm happy to use the two thunderbolt ports, it's just a bit frustrating that you've paid £1500 for a laptop and one of its 'features' doesn't work as expected.
So you're saying people have to work around daisy chaining... I really don't understand what people feel is so great about daisy chaining devices. I thought we moved away from such bus topologies onto star topologies because it's easier to add and remove devices dynamically without impacting the rest of the connected devices.
10Base2 Ethernet anyone ? SCSI chains ? You really would rather go back to this stuff than what replaced it ?
Can you even start to imagine how much a Thunderbolt hub would cost ?299$ for a Belkin generic POS port extender with cheapo ports... now imagine a 4 Thunderbolt port affair...
I forgot you had mentioned the fact that it worked fine when you weren't running Mac OS. Definitely sounds like Mac OS is scaling or not reading the full EDID. That is annoying. I assume you've futzed with the underscan settings in the display control panel?
One cable ? Sorry, that's not sufficient. Every device in the chain still requires its own cable.
Daisy chaining died for good reasons in the 90s. Lets leave it buried. Anyway, Thunderbolt is also capable of being used in a star topologie.
Can you even start to imagine how much a Thunderbolt hub would cost ?299$ for a Belkin generic POS port extender with cheapo ports... now imagine a 4 Thunderbolt port affair...
one cable to my computer, that means one to disconnect if I want to take my portable non of the other need to be futzed with..
one cable to my computer, that means one to disconnect if I want to take my portable non of the other need to be futzed with..
You've complained about daisy chaining, but then went on to essentially explain why it exists as a solution in the first place.
Or you could just unmount the HDD when not using it. If the data needs to be accessed from other computers on your net work just share the drive?
The whole point is that you do not need a hub
, a hub would also saturate the bus since all devices added to the hub would share the bus going from the hub. Thunderbolt makes it easy to extend and add peripherals that needs the bandwidth on computers that lacks pcie card slots.
I might not "need" one, but I sure as heck would WANT one for the aforementioned reasons (i.e. daisy-chaining is a ROYAL PITA).
As I've said in my previous post, there's nothing "easy" about daisy-chaining. Connect/disconnect devices fairly often with a monitor on the end and you'll quickly find it's a ROYAL PITA really fast. This is why all Macs should have at least TWO TB ports (i.e. one for monitors and one for data and if you need two for one or the other you'd have them, but at least you wouldn't likely interrupt your monitor chain as often as data and more importantly a come/go type hard drive or whatever could always just be the last device in a chain of home equipment (i.e. it's not a pain IF temporary devices are plugged in LAST). The problem is that monitors that do not provide their own pass-through (i.e. ALL monitors except Apple's with the TB hub on it) *MUST* be the last device and that's were it goes South very quickly.
Well, I was thinking of a portable hard drive situation where you friend/family member might come over and want a copy or want to share their copy of family photos or home videos or whatever under the sun. The point is that they would need to connect to your computer and then when they're done they're going to disconnect the drive and take it with them. You, meanwhile, have to fiddle with your monitor connections, etc. to accommodate them with daisy-chaining. A hub is SO much preferable. Now I'm not against a daisy-chaining OPTION, but so far I see no Thunderbolt hubs/switches for just more ports and for some odd reason I doubt I ever will (technical issues and/or price?)
I might not "need" one, but I sure as heck would WANT one for the aforementioned reasons (i.e. daisy-chaining is a ROYAL PITA).
As I've said in my previous post, there's nothing "easy" about daisy-chaining. Connect/disconnect devices fairly often with a monitor on the end and you'll quickly find it's a ROYAL PITA really fast. This is why all Macs should have at least TWO TB ports (i.e. one for monitors and one for data and if you need two for one or the other you'd have them, but at least you wouldn't likely interrupt your monitor chain as often as data and more importantly a come/go type hard drive or whatever could always just be the last device in a chain of home equipment (i.e. it's not a pain IF temporary devices are plugged in LAST). The problem is that monitors that do not provide their own pass-through (i.e. ALL monitors except Apple's with the TB hub on it) *MUST* be the last device and that's were it goes South very quickly.
There's only 1 cable to your computer in a star topology too... you know, the one going to the "breakout box". 1 Ethernet cable for a switched Ethernet network, 1 USB cable going to the USB hub... etc.. etc..
Sorry, still don't see the advantage of a Daisy chain in your post here...
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Buses are most notorious for collisions, but then again, that's a protocol design, not a topology problem really. 10Base2 was much more prone to collisions than hubs in star topology. So that's not the reason why "switches" would be required.
As for "switch ports being expensive", the daisy chain in Thunderbolt doesn't make it cheaper. For one, devices that can be chained require 2 ThunderBolt ports, which prevent the use of the cheaper controllers (Port Ridge 1 channel controller). So in essence, the hardware is already there, each device needing an expensive controller anyhow. So cost isn't really an issue.
No frankly, I don't know what Intel was thinking in even making Daisy chaining available, much less desirable.
Why would you want one if you don't need one?
Daisy chaining is perfect for the intended purpose
That's just your opinion
you would have your devices between the monitor and your computer in this case,
also the alternative would be far more expensive for the intended purpose
Or you could just put it on a thumbdrive and had it to them. or burn it to a CD so that can take it with them..I cary a 16GB thumb drive on my key chain exactly for this reason
Oh, I dunno. Try reading my previous posts to find out, maybe?
NO, IT ISN'T. Try reading my previous posts. It's a PAIN IN THE BACK SIDE.
Typing with caps lock is not going to convince me, I have personal experience with daisy chaining from scsi, firewire and midi and it's great for it's intended purpose. Perhaps the intention is not clear to you.
Seeing as it's intended purpose is to be a pain in the arse, I'd say you're correct.
These devices are the reason I have an opinion about daisy-chaining to begin with. I didn't like it then. I don't like it now. Yes, it's better than NO option. But a hub/switch with a boat load of ports beats it hands down any day of the week for convenience.
Picking a different solution that requires switches and hubs would be more expensive while maintaining the purpose (high bandwidth, low latency) of Thunderbolt. It's not a usb replacement, if you like usb and it's enough for your needs, use usb.
Buses are most notorious for collisions, but then again, that's a protocol design, not a topology problem really. 10Base2 was much more prone to collisions than hubs in star topology. So that's not the reason why "switches" would be required.
As for "switch ports being expensive", the daisy chain in Thunderbolt doesn't make it cheaper. For one, devices that can be chained require 2 ThunderBolt ports, which prevent the use of the cheaper controllers (Port Ridge 1 channel controller). So in essence, the hardware is already there, each device needing an expensive controller anyhow. So cost isn't really an issue.
No frankly, I don't know what Intel was thinking in even making Daisy chaining available, much less desirable.
I blame Intel for ThunderBlunder
For $200 more than a comparable motherboard without Thunderbolt.
Worth it?
Some conveniences are worth a few extra bucks. It's so sad you cannot comprehend that simple fact.
Fortunately, like I said, I only use the port for a 2nd monitor and given the utterly ridiculous prices of TB peripherals, it WILL stay that way. The price of a switch/hub for TB is irrelevant until a device comes along I need that can actually use that bandwidth. Otherwise, USB3 is more than adequate for mundane stuff.
None of that changes the fact that daisy-chaining is pure crap in the 21st Century. Intel made a HUGE mistake there. It's like they wanted the format to fail from day one between that and the exclusive deal with Apple (guaranteed to make the technology so far behind that it didn't stand a snow-ball's chance in Hell of competing with USB3. You say it's not supposed to, but I think you know that's simply not true.
Apple is the only major backer of it right now and they've ABANDONED the professional market for the most part.
USB3 Mark 2 will be out in a year or two and it will be the same badwidth as Thunderbolt at 1/10 the cost and 1 MILLION times the installed user base in short order making TB a sad memory and lesson of how NOT to do things and probably one of Steve Jobs' greatest blunders next to the Newton and Lisa (although Intel deserves much of the credit too).
Too bad that Apple doesn't seem to care about pro market anymore.Thunderbolt's Unique Selling Point is in the professional sector: allowing you to attach fast RAID arrays and pro audio/video capture devices and alternative interfaces to laptops and SFF machines. It could be critical in keeping Macs in the pro audio/video market.
Firewire lost the competition to usb, when in almost all situations fw would have been techinally better solution. Loosing the game also led to smaller quantities produced, which kept unit price high. If fw would have became the most used connection, I'd guess it would cost now the same than usb2 does.Firewire was not a flop and if Thunderbold does as well as Firewire is then I'll be a very happy Mac user for the forseeable future. Thanks to Firewire, Macs have been able to do things PC users could only dream of.
Most of these features are replicated with Thunderbolt but not challenged by USB3 like much longer cable length, much higher bandwidth, lower latency, daisy chaining and target mode, and more electrical power. And Thunderbolt adds a lot of features to FireWire that's not supported by USB3, like monitor support, external PCIe expansion and protocol agnosticity.
Stuff we'll never see on USB are 4K (aka Retina) displays, 10 Gb Ethernet-ports (or multiple Gbit Eth) and bidirectional 10 Gb links is just the _first_ implementation of Thunderbolt. This technology is actually designed for 100 Gbps so it has room to grow.
And with daisy-chaining the all devices do not saturate the last link before computer?The whole point is that you do not need a hub, a hub would also saturate the bus since all devices added to the hub would share the bus going from the hub. Thunderbolt makes it easy to extend and add peripherals that needs the bandwidth on computers that lacks pcie card slots.
I'd like to know how many situations there are that a pro wants to use a laptop with FC.Thing is, for some professionals, the ability to plug a Fibre Channel or pro capture card into their laptop is going to be transformative and worth the $$$howmuch!? price tag.
However, the typical consumer simply doesn't need PCIe these days. Back in the day, when I assembled my own PCs, the PCI/ISA bus would be loaded up with sound card, ethernet card, maybe a second disc controller, SCSI card for a scanner, Firewire card for video editing etc. However, increasingly that all ended up on the motherboard or available via USB and PCI sat there unused. The only thing I've plugged into a PCI slot in the last 5-6 years is a TV tuner (and some of those turn out to be the maker's USB product stuck onto a USB controller card!)
So PCIe enclosures are always going to be a small market, and in electronics, small market == high prices.
How would TB-switch be more comical than GbE-switch. Both behave the same: one pipe defines the max for the others.Are you just trying to be daft? Two 10 Gbit/s channels per link designed to carry up to 12.9 Gbit/s of isochronous display data connected to a 6-port hub? The result would be comical. PCIe doesn't do hubs; you need a switch. And Thunderbolt daisy chains are not the same as traditional busses, due to the dual-channel, switched fabric architecture you're essentially creating a high speed ring.
Well, first you should get those 1.5% even to start using TB. Then maybe 1.5% of those might buy the switch. 35M*.015*.015= 7875 buyers market. Go for it!Thunderbolt supports tiered stars just fine. At this point Apple has shipped at least 35 million hosts, so even if you could only convince 1.5% of the installed base to buy a switch, you'd be able to shift half a million units. Call up Intel, I'm sure they'll talk if you agree to contract for half a mil over the next 12 months. The bottom line is it's not viable economically, that's why it doesn't exist in the marketplace.
It's irrelevant that some model exist. Relevant would be how many units they are selling. Does anybody know?They have the P8Z77-V PRO model which is available with or without TB. The price difference is only $25.
Granted, the premium model is expensive.
But the price wasn't the point though. It was that they are already selling mobos with thunderbolt.
And with daisy-chaining the all devices do not saturate the last link before computer?
Too bad that Apple doesn't seem to care about pro market anymore.
What do many pro's ask? New MP, versatile xMac, matte screens, more ports (also legacy like fw) and less dongles with macs, more storage units by users choise (ODD taken away, nothing to replace it). How PRO is to take ethernet connection away from professional computer. Almost anybody that needs to process a lot of data, needs it. MacbookPRO isn't for pros anymore. It just tries to still ride with the impression...
Not to even consider Apple's software offerings...
AFAIK, Apple thinks that TB is useful for them only to sell ATBD. Otherwise they would kill TB as fast as they could. It is cutting badly their profits and too few users even need it. It would go the same way than ODD did.
Nevertheless it looks that Apple don't care so much about anything about their mac ecosystem. Why else they would sell ATBD without usb3 after a whole year when usb3 was put to macs? Or do they really think that in first year those who really need usb3, buy new macs and in second year, those who just like to have usb3 would start updating their appleDisplays?
What makes you think it would be a few extra bucks, have you seen what Thunderbolt products with 1 port costs currently?? How about a solution that required these extra pieces to work equivalently?
Then why do you care?
Thunderbolt is more of a future replacement for Firewire than usb if anything.
This is such a contradiction, why did they bother to develop and add thunderbolt to all it's models then.
Both Firewire and Thunderbolt has benefits over usb (the Universal Serial Bus), it's not all about bandwidth it's also about real time reliability in low latency situations.
For the computer or the user, it doesn't matter what the bandwidth between the devices is. Nevertheless you only have the max bandwidth (from the link from your computer) shared to all your devices together. So for the effective bandwidth, there's no difference between daisy chain or star topology.No, or it depends, all devices maintain full bandwidth between themselves. It's the main advantage of daisy chain compared to a bus topology.
And if you need 3 ports and your mac only has 2?I think Apple sees the Thunderbolt port as a way to simplify the pro line. Need an Ethernet port? Get a $29 adapter and put it in one of the ports. Firewire? Do the same.
And if you need 3 ports and your mac only has 2?
Have you seen daisy-chainable ethernet port of fw?
For 3 ports you need one of these über expensive hubs, that you still can't even buy yet. You call this progress?
How many pros would like to have ethernet AND firewire AND displayport simultaneously?How many people really need that, though? Apple is not one to keep legacy ports around "just in case" someone needs them, and certainly not one to clutter up a 13" or 15" notebook with them.