Question Thunderbolt Networking not showing up in Windows 10

tablespoon

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Hello, I connected a Windows 10 PC to a Mac directly via a Thunderbolt cable. Under Network and Internet > Network Connection, Thunderbolt Networking does not show up. Please let me know how to enable it.
 

Tech Junky

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Download the Intel TB package. Also, verify you have TB and not USB4 on the board. They have the same speed but, the Mac might throw a fit and not sync.

My laptop was a bit questionable until I hunted down the controller chip inside to verify as in windows it shows up as USB but the controller is indeed TB.

On my server I picked up a gigabyte aic for TB based on the 8th gen TB controller for $60 on Amazon. Nice to have with 2 ports and 100w charging via the SATA power cable.
 
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tablespoon

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Which one are you talking about? I recall that one time notification showed up and prompted me to download some kind of thunderbolt related program.

I already verified that my motherboard has TB3 support. I have Thunderbolt Control Center installed on my Windows 10 PC but my Mac did not show up. When I replaced the Caldigit cables (tried two) with a USB-C cable which should not work, Windows detected that I plugged in something but said the connected device is not recognizable and therefore cannot be used.
 

Tech Junky

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with a USB-C cable which should not work, Windows detected that I plugged in something but said the connected device is not recognizable and therefore cannot be used.
This sounds like a TB auth issue then. BIOS/UEFI needs to be changed to allow any device and not sure what to do on the MAC side to enable any device.

Cables are usually the first thing to look at and you found one that initiates something when connected to the MAC which is a good step. The auth part is likely the next hurdle. After that it might work or there may be something else needed to enable communication between the two.

When I was getting my laptop setup for TB it was a bit of a PITA to verify things before putting $$$ down on a device to use it. I did find one cable I already had did 20gbps through the process of testing and it's a cheap 1M $10 cable. It fit into the mix of ports as my server has a 20gbps header on it with the front port plugged into that. The TB card though also worked with the cable and hit 20gbps as well. I did end up testing ~5 cables though just to make sure I had the best option for transfers and some were mediocre and others performed at top speeds. The other issue I ran into was drive testing and a bit shocked a higher end SN850 performed worse than a cheaper SN770 w/o DRAM on the drive. The other issue was data dumps vs multithreading data to / from the enclosure.

I haven't bothered with connecting the laptop to the server though with a cable directly. I suppose that's an option though I just didn't think of. 40gbps of bandwidth between the two would come in handy for a mass copy vs my 5GE Ethernet I've been using occasionally between the two. Gives me something to ponder and play with when I have some spare time.
 

tablespoon

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This sounds like a TB auth issue then. BIOS/UEFI needs to be changed to allow any device and not sure what to do on the MAC side to enable any device.

Just bought that expensive Apple Thunderbolt 4 cable but still does not work.

Do you know where I should make the change in the BIOS of my Gigabyte Z390 motherboard?

In the BIOS, Peripherals, I have:

Discrete Thunderbolt (TM) Support: Enabled
TBT Vt-dbase security: Disabled
Thunderbolt Boot Support: Disabled
Wake from Thunderbolt (TM) Devices: Enabled
Security Level: User authorization
Discrete Thunderbolt (TM) Configuration

Under Security Level, I have the following options:

No Security
User Authorization
Secure Connect
Display Port Only
USB Docking Only

Under Thunderbolt (T<) Configuration, there are:

Thunderbolt USB Support Disabled
GPIO3 Force Pwr: Disabled
DTBT Controller 0 Configuration
 

Tech Junky

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Looking at the full manual it almost seems as though they're being dedicated for Video not data. It does say TB3 which there are several different generations of controllers with different options. It also mentions TB ports being UBS3.1Gen2 which isn't a 40gbps connection. I had a laptop that mentioned something similar and sure didn't get TB performance from it. I think sometimes OEM's push a lot of marketing terms and sometimes don't validate them in a technical sense of their performance.

I was leery of buying my current laptop for TB use as the prior one mentioned TB but didn't actually have it in a working sense. So, the first thing I did was start digging into TB devices / cables to get something ordered and verify the functionality within the return window of the laptop to validate that it actually did 40gbps and not just another hyped up 10gbps port.

I'm trying to recall when intel started opening the doors more to non-Mac systems to have TB enabled on them. I know the bigger push has been the last couple of years with dropping the licensing fees with USB4 / TB4.

I think I mentioned this above but I added a GB TB4 card to my ASR board on the server and one of the things about the AIC is you have a 5-pin header cable that connects to the card / MOBO to make things work. Looking at your MOBO though there's no header option just the built in controller with no mention of which controller gen it is using.

So, I tested this PC<>PC TB thing we've been talking about and watching the syslog on the server nothing is popping up when connecting the 2 together with a cable. I'm thinking maybe this isn't a function of TB to adhoc two PC's together.

On W11 though when I plugin my TB4 enclosure it adds an entry under USB controllers to indicate the new device being connected and the other 2 get added as well.
1677347469238.png
 

Tech Junky

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Looks like it's possible but, there's more to it than I was looking for. It still should have output something in syslog. The TB is a bit temperamental in Linux. Not sure I went through and set all of the options I had before redoing the system recently to enable everything I had before refreshing the os recently.
 
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mxnerd

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No TB experience, just my own speculation by reading the manual.

@Tech Junky was right. According to the manual, the onboard Thunderbolt looks like is for graphics only

Untitled.png


or maybe not? Because it can daisy chain up to 6 TB devices. You have to share the same bandwidth with other TB devices apparently.

You probably can only operate in either TB or USB mode at a time in the same daisy chain, I think.

Untitled.png
 

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Tech Junky

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@mxnerd

thanks for the screenshot and reading between the lines as well. I thought most TB connections were a full suite of the protocol and functions. Then again I only recently dove into the TB world within the last year or so because it was mostly a Mac thing and no way was I buying one of those.

When i was researching TB though I didn't really spot much difference between the generations though other than the speeds of 1/2/3/4 jumping upwards though 3&4 are both 40gbps. There are some subtleties though between them other than licensing IIRC. I didn't figure there was a video only version as that's kind of obtuse and not sure Intel would even allow such a thing to be certified.
 
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Tech Junky

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@mxnerd

That's one helluva post. I'm running a 12700K on an ASR board though w/ Linux. I had a corruption / permissions issue from something else though that forced a reload of the OS a little while back and didn't do the TB tweaks I had before when I first picked up the card and did some testing with it. Just something to add to my list of things to do again sometime.
 

tablespoon

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I checked with Gigabyte Support. They told me the following:

"What are you attempting to accomplish? The port on the board are Output, the port on your Mac should also be output.
If you are trying to access data on both system, it needs to be connected over a Network via the LAN "

When I told them what I want to do, they replied:

"It would be suggested you do research for network sharing. It's just the PC and OSX are different OS uses different file system. "

Doesn't seem to be very helpful.
 

Tech Junky

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192,168,x,2 - PC
192.168.x.3 - MAC

Subnet mask - 255.255.255.0

Gateway blank.

Map the drives using the IP to use the 10GE connection. smb://192.168.x.2/$share for the MAC and \\192.168.x.3\$share for the PC