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Thunderbolt card found!

R

repentix

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 26, 2013
205
2
hi, I was just browsing youtube when i noticed this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuqfVN_bliI

it's some kind of enterprise solution of transforming a mac mini into a server rack. What I thought was interesting is that instead of just soldering the thunderbolt connection onto the board they just put in a thunderbolt card! By the way this solution actually allows up to 3 pcie cards in there and 24 hdd bays !

What I was thinking is that you could perhaps transfer the thunderbolt card from the rack to an old old mac pro and get thunderbolt connectivity that way? That would be pretty cool.
I know that it would be crazy since the rack itself costs nearly as much as a nMP, but I just wanted to know if this could actually be a way of getting thunderbolt on an old mac pro?

thanks

repentix
 
This Netstor solution requires a Mac mini with a Thunderbolt port. My 2011 Mac Mini had a Thunderbolt port. I think you have misunderstood what this enclosure does, or maybe I am misunderstanding your post. In addition, to actually make this useful you need a PCIe RAID card.
 
What I ment is that they put the thunderbolt card in via pcie. Wouldn't it be possible to just take the card out of that enclosure and put it in an old mac pro?
 
The Intel server chipsets on the cheesegraters are too old to support TB to connect to the PCIe bus.

Though if I was a billionaire I would throw Quo computer a few million to make an open firmware hackintosh twin Haswell EP Xeon cpu board custom made to fit the towers.

It would be worth the money simply to see the bedlam that would happen on here :D
 
repentix said:
What I ment is that they put the thunderbolt card in via pcie. Wouldn't it be possible to just take the card out of that enclosure and put it in an old mac pro?
Click to expand...

In simple terms, the card in this enclosure does TB --> PCIe. This is nothing special and there are plenty of other enclosures that do the exact same thing. In order to have Thunderbolt in the oMP you want a card that can do PCIe--> TB. There is no such product that can do this in the classic Mac Pro and this card isn't the solution.
 
Thats dissapointing......what I would do if I was a billionaire is I would design my own open firmware board with 7 pcie slots and 4 cpus and 16 or more ram slots. That thing would run like a beast! Imagine 48 cores, 512 gb ram! :D
 
repentix said:
Thats dissapointing......what I would do if I was a billionaire is I would design my own open firmware board with 7 pcie slots and 4 cpus and 16 or more ram slots. That thing would run like a beast! Imagine 48 cores, 512 gb ram! :D
Click to expand...

Yes, in my semi drunken state I am actually considering emailing Quo to see if they fancy another kickstarter campaign :D

I think the 4/5,1's could only fit two CPU's but that will do. Twin 18 core Broadwell EP's lol
 
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