Thunderbolt 1 - the second life - Research, Notes, Boardviews etc.

[edwardgeo]

Everything begin a year ago. Few of thunderbolt dongles failed because of cable damage. Influence of time. Okay easy to buy a new, that is cheap. Okay i did it, but decided to look inside and maybe repair for fun. So Disassembly was pretty hard, but successful. one of wires was partially frayed i have cut that wires to resolder them back. It was hard, wires are shielded 36 or 32 AWG. So a year i decided to come back to project and rebuild Thunderbolt dongle to cheap pci expansion for x1 pcie cards like USB 3.0 hub or soundcard.



The first files:
Apple Thunderbolt Ethernet - SPI Eeprom flash - 4096 bytes - 32 b.bin
HPM-em-00020007.bin
iMac-21.4-22-01.bin
iMac-27-22-01.bin
MBP-22-01.bin
ThorUtil.efi

from two dongles - spi roms.zip with two firmwares for comparison


Original research here (detailed logic analyzing, etc):

Thunderbolt 1 Into deep. Notes, Boardviews etc.

Everything begin a year ago. Few of thunderbolt dongles failed because of cable damage. Influence of time. Okay easy to buy a new, that is cheap. Okay i did it, but decided to look inside and maybe repair for fun. So Disassembly was pretty hard, but successful. one of wires was partially frayed...

www.techpowerup.com

Problem:
!!!!!! Currently looking for Firewire dongle DSL2210 firmware to unlock whitelist !!!!!!

Project status:
Looking for coop. Already burned 2 dongles. One was restored after first stage of research and working fine, one is fully new but without the box and one is at research now.




Other images here:

Also i soldered Ethernet IC pcb into PCIe X1 and it is working fine:

 

[tckoo1411]

interesting work you have there.

 

[edwardgeo]

END OF PROJECT​

This story is about some researches and discoveries of Thunderbolt technology is ending. So that is results:

The original theme is here: Thunderbolt 1 Into deep. Notes, Boardviews etc.

1. The connection of Apple Thunderbolt to Ethernet Dongle to Apple Wifi card from iMac:

2. Theory of how dongle caddy should look like:

3. How the rough soldering look like:

4. How PCI Config space look like when this setup is connected:

5. How Modification appears at MacOs System Information:

6. The same, but at windows:

7. Adding the first test PCB Prototype Caddy for adapter, 2400 dpi quality:

8. Adding firmware with 5 versions of UUID with DROM patching (actually cosmetics, but whatever)


Thanks for your attention!
If someone is planing to design a caddy PCB, please contact me for teamwork!
The legacy goal: make a PCB in which you can easily insert DSL2210 PCB via Thunderbolt connector to it and solder an FPC cable to create a simple bridge. This board will be a good option to connect sound cards or other interesting stuff