I have a Dell TB15 connected to two 1920x1080 screens (one via display port, other via HDMI; DP chaining always made trouble) and been using it with an XPS13 9360 running Ubuntu, and a Dell mobile workstation running Windows 7. Some firmare and driver updates needed but then it worked like a charm.
Now I have a MBP... A1708 Mid 2017 running MacOS X 10.13.6, and it does not work at all. When I plug in the TB15 on one of the two TB3 ports the LED on the plug stays off. But the funny thing: the Mac gets charged from the TB15 dock via thunderbolt. So I guess it must be a firmware / driver issue.
What I have tried:
checking if the two TB ports on the mac make a difference. no.
installing all OS updates offered. no.
checking if the dock gets shown in System information -> thunderbolt (see screenshot). "No device connected" on both ports.
installing the Thunderbolt3Unblocker kernel module that allows for using hardware unsupported by Apple from [1] see also [2]. A...
kextstat | grep ryan
... in the console after a reboot shows it, so I assume it is loaded. I did expect too much, as I read that it only unblocks devices that show up in system information with a remark "unsupported"; but worth a try. However, nothing.
- resetted SMC, NVRAM; see [3]. On reboot after command-option-p-r it asked me for a wifi key during boot, did something then booted up. But also did not solve the problem.
Now I am stuck. I really do not want to buy another dock as the setup has been working for me well; but I have to get the mac to work in my environment...
Any ideas appreciated.
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[2]
[3]
14 Answers
Good afternoon,
Please follow this manual process carefully. It worked for me but i'm yet to get the display(s) working, but you may have more luck using the other display outputs on the dock.
I can confirm all of the USBs work, the 3.5mm audio works and my MBP 15" is receiving power
• You first need to reboot your Mac and hold cmd+r to get into the restore mode. Add the top go into the terminal and type csrutils disable, check this has been done by typing csrutils status.
• Restart and go back into your Mac normally.
• You now need a HEX editor, i've used iHEX from the Mac store.
• Shift+cmd+g and type /system/Library/Extensions
• Right click and show package contents
• Contents/MacOS and copy this to make a backup somewhere and copy it onto your desktop.
• Drag the IOThunderboltFamily from your desktop into iHEX
• Hit cmd+f
• Find 55 48 89 E5 41 57 41 56 41 55 41 54 53 48 81 EC 28 01, replace with 55 48 89 E5 31 C0 5D C3 41 55 41 54 53 48 81 EC 28 01 and hit cmd+s.
• Drag the file from your desktop into Contents/MacOS and when asked to overwrite click yes.
• Downlaod KextUtility () and run it and let it do it’s magic.
• Restart your computer and plug the dock in.
Hope that helps, learnt all of it from the wonderfully helpful egpu.io.
6Thunderbolt3Unblocker is a relatively safe and easy way to add support for the Dell TB15 Thunderbolt dock.
Caveats: I used a Win10 laptop to update the TB15 firmware. Dell's update software presented the firmware update.
USB and Power Delivery work, but DisplayPort/HDMI outputs do not.
The Dell TB15 was recalled in 2016, however in many cases Dell left the TB15 in the hands of their respective owners and just gave them a TB16 and now these TB15 are abudant on eBay.
This is an issue with OS X.
OS X (versions 10.13.4 to 10.13.6) did not support DisplayPort drivers which are required by this docking station.
However, OS X 10.14 fixed this issue. If you can update to 10.14 you shouldn't have any problem with this.
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