Live data from Hacker News

M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2

eclecticlight.co

291–300 of 333 posts

Re: M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2

#291
post #111
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sucks, however, is that you can transfer 1TB to a USB drive correctly, and then finally have a bit-error that spoils the entire transfer and might even corrupt your drive. Happened to me several times during testing on different machines and with different cables and drives (luckily no real data was lost, but USB is now sort of banned from my office for use with external harddrives). Any sane protocol would be a…

Use a filesystem that does end-to-end error detection and correction. I use ZFS on all of my USB drives (even "real" SATA and M.2 SSDs via adaptors) and it frequently finds checksum errors (and thanks to the design of ZFS, is able to completely recover without any risk of further corruption).

That's great if you only use these drives on your big computers. Sadly if you do want a "universally" portable drive – usable on an Android phone and an iPad and whatnot – you're stuck with horrible basic filesystems like exfat :(

Re: M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a dock. Not disputing the DP MST, just noting there are docks that can drive 2 x 6K. CalDigit's new dock takes a single TB4 cable to drive, and can do: - 2x TB4 - 1x DP 1.4 - supporting - 2x 5K60 OR - 1x 8K60 OR - 1x 4K144 OR - 1x 1440p240 According to https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2021/02/05/usb4-tb4-docks/ Or, as CalDigit puts it (see final paragraph): Single 8K or Dual 6K Monitors Users on Windows can conne…

How does it do 2x 5K60? The only true 5K monitors I know of are the LG 5k and the Apple Studio Display which are both TB or USB-C monitors, not DP. 5K60 takes ~25gb/sec, multiply times two and the single TB cable as input can’t handle 50gb/sec.

Display stream compression. You can only do it with the ASD as the LG doesn't support DSC.

Re: M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2

#293

I have two USB 3.2 drives that don’t work at all on my M1, but work fine on my Intel Mac. On the M1 they show up in Disk Inspector but any attempt to read from them, or even eject them, gets the bouncy ball.

Is this perhaps just a file system formatting issue? Disk Utility (there is no Disk Inspector) should tell you how they have been formatted. You mentioned reading from them. Can you erase them? Tried different cables?

Again: works fine on Intel Mac.

Re: M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2

#294
post #11
post #6

USB went from being the universal bus, to just being the universal connector. There are never any guarantees that your device (or cable!) actually supports the operation you’re trying

I'm fine with devices offering different capabilities. But the cables should be marked clearly... I have one of the chinese drawing tablets, which has a convoluted "to USB-C" adapter. Apparently you can also drive it with USB-C directly, however only a manufacturer-provided cable (supershort) fits the port. Noone know what cable you can use alternately...

Some crap devices from China only accept specific voltage for charging (with bundled charger) without PD negotiation, despite they use USB Type-C port.

Re: M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It didn’t become widely known until after the M1s had shipped This is nonsense. For every product Apple sells they list the technical specs on the website at the same time it is on sale. And it clearly states for the iMac that it supports a single display.

I get what you are saying, but most people don’t question if a computer can support 2 external monitors in 2021/2022, so it’s very unlikely they would glance at that in the specs. Hell my 2016 MBPro can push at least 4 external monitors. Maybe more I honestly don’t know, it’s not like I ever needed that information. It’s like a more extreme version of buying a phone and finding out it doesn’t come with a charger. Sur…

> but most people don’t question if a computer can support 2 external monitors in

But we are talking about the iMac here i.e. it already is an external monitor.

Is there much of a market for 3 displays ?

Re: M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2

#296
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least one person at work is using something like that to drive two displays from the M1, so I suspect it can be made to work well enough.

I have two external monitors on my M1 Air. The "main" one is connected via hdmi and runs at 120Hz, and another one is connected via DisplayLink compatible adapter which is connected via usb to the same usb hub as the first monitor. That hub is then connected with two usb type-c connectors+cables to the laptop. It works quite fine. There is a small caveat though. The monitor connected with DisplayLink has a very small…

What adaptors/dongles are you using? I could really use a solution that keeps at least one monitor 120hz

Re: M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask why? I assume you were aware of this limitation, as Apple was pretty clear in the specs about it, that it only supports one external monitor. If you pull the trigger on a purchase without reading the specs, then it's pretty much on you, no?

Not really, every single Mac Mini I can think of in the past decade has been able too support more than one display. Honestly, it's the kind of thing I just assume an expensive machine (yes $700 is expensive) would support.

Yeah I don’t get how so many people are going “you should’ve read the specs!”

Who confirms features that virtually everyone computer has had for a decade?

Re: M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2

#298
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would just be worse I disagree. In my cable/charger box I have 4 USB-c chargers with 4 USB-c cables, and they're not interchangeable for all intents and purposes. I've ended up sharpieing what device they belong to rather than reading the specs printed on the back of the charger, because otherwise I end up trickle charging devices (and thankfully I don't use a USB c dock, or I would be in all sorts of hurt. >…

A legal mandate that they had to be different colours where be the best way I think.

Works well for USB3.0 vs. 2.0/1.0 that’s for sure. Legally mandated I’m not sure, but yeah, colors for sure.

Re: M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2

#299
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (or cable!) Recently, I tried to find a Displayport-compatible cable and went through three (admittedly on the cheap side) cables that claimed to support it but didn't - in the end, I just bought a certified Thunderbolt 3 cable to avoid any ambiguity in whether they included all the wires or not

Yep. I use two monitors, both on displayport. Bought like 4 cables and one adapter to get a working combination :)

What cables/adaptors are you using currently? Looking for good solutions myself.

Re: M1 Thunderbolt ports don’t fully support USB 3.1 Gen 2

#300

The inability of the USB standards body to stick to a versioning scheme beggars belief: what in the world could "USB 3.1 Gen 2" possibly mean? Versions are free, why not simply name it "USB 3.2" and make the next one 3.3? "Gen 2" strikes me as the "Essay FINAL (final version 2).docx" of standards revisions.

> what in the world could "USB 3.1 Gen 2" possibly mean? Versions are free, why not simply name it "USB 3.2" and make the next one 3.3? USB 3.1 Gen 1 is the straight rebranding of USB 3.0, USB 3.1 Gen 2 is the "original" 3.1, which is 3.0 updated to a 10Gbps signalling rate (from 5), and a more efficient encoding (128/132, versus 8/10). But wait, there's worse! USB 3.2 Gen 1 is the same thing as USB 3.1 Gen 1 USB 3.2…

I quit reading halfway through this in frustration even though I really, really need this information.
Post reply on HN