trollinteemo

Not sure if its treated differently by bios or if this is just completely wrong, but setup 1.x might not work becuase its dealing with south bridge not pch and southbridge was replaced with pch twords the end of series 5.

Dont you love it when you spell towards as twords, dam

After that as you can probably see if you have been on these forums very long, i have been trying to make these forums more organized and easy to use/ get introduced to (with the help from nando of course). I have still been working on my product, i am just gearing it towards the community that would go twords the more expensive AIO enclosures that work out of the box such as video editors. I would still be offering the product at the same price ~60-100 for the main board which is still leagues lower than anything else comparable because even at that price i would make a worthwhile profit due to standard bulk pricing and deals with distributors because they were interested in my idea.

The "epiphany" you are referring to wasnt something that special. This past summer i spent a fair part of two months troubleshooting and "perfecting" my egpu setup on my mbp to a standard that i thought was near production build quality. (Nice case, nearly the size of the gpu, met all power requirements, etc) This involved creating a new mainboard as i was using the akitio's tb daughterboard. Since i was already paying to dry run my board i planned functionality for combining channels and using other cards such as ones for the bplus adapters or an x4 m.2 or usb 3 or anything else that comes out thus allowing me to use my egpu with my aspire s3 as well (has amazing mpcie placement). At one point in this process I had decided to see if there was possible interest in me selling my setup as a product (as i already had the neccecary contacts and pp setup completed to mass/batch produce). What i got out of it as you can see in that threads poll, is that those who didnt have an egpu or were having trouble, or wanted something that looked nice wanted mine, and all of the people who were fine with their messy setups (which i had for a while) said that they were content with the options available. Thus i tried the tbex adapter with my board to see if i could make my product more appealing by lowering the price. Since the tbex uses a multidirectional controller, it got detected by the laptop, however was not able to tunnel a gpu so i gave up.

I would suggest that you revise your methods of research/googling and reading the previous posts before you think that you have made an epiphany that others have not seen before. Because of hardware requirements a simple female-female riser would not cut it and an entirely new board would have to be fabricated. Even with that (and considering the TB ex uses one of the only bi directional TB core) the TBEX is only detected by the computer under specific circumstances and even then it is not directly possible to make an egpu. (I happen to have a TBEX2 and the custom board that I made for my egpu production project to be bi-directional). Even so we still have no clue about the function of the individual pins on the header (even if they seem to have little to no effect on detection and power) and If they might affect PCIe throughput. Sry pretty sure I lost my train of thought somewhere in that but in short its not possible unless you have some inside information on the header or the inner workings of the multi layered board that is the TBEX. I am continuing to do some tests with possible fixes for this, if I make some headway I will probably have it replace the akitio daughterboard on my gpu solution (at least for the first run or until asus is forced to take it down).

Actually looking at the chart again all currently used keys are electrically pcie 2x. So there is a high probability that it would work. If you end up having a slot that is not A. I can make adapters for M B and E. I have the m.2 spec for my m.2 daughterboard so it wouldn't be too much trouble to make an x4 cable. Though I'd have to force output into multiple cables for use on pe4c, I'm developing one with minidp but its in the pipeline for after I mass produce my main board.

You can easily check what type you have and what it can.support. go on the wikipedia page for m.2 and they have pictures of all the key formats and what functions they have. Pretty sure most of the laptops out now have B key which has x2 pcie

Yep. I've had it working perfectly with HDMI audio and hotplugging since beta 1. Recently since it is no longer in beta some kexts have been modified having to do with graphics, but thankfully they didn't interfere.

Setup 1.3 has to be bought separately. Previously it was free for everyone but companies abused the TOU so it now costs money. If you are using win 8.1 and have a PC with uefi or a Mac I can help you parse your partition to efi which makes egpus nearly plugnplay

Hey, I sent this in an email to nando and jacobsson, yet I got no response so I thought I would see what the general users think of it. I feel that this forum is a bit messy and hard to read for new users, so I devised what I think is a better way to organize the forum. http://pastebin.com/eJ4DT8hE

Hi, I'm pretty sure this has been answered before, but can I choose to power the Akitio daughter board via its PCIe connection rather than the 4 pin plug? Thanks Also could someone give me the dimensions for the daughterboard (as accurate as possible)

Ok, just a few updates. 1) new structure, I am now using a mainboard with multiple exchangeable daughterboards (different IO ie. thunderbolt vs usb3 vs expresscard) 2) amazing advancements in scalability (using multiple adapters or daughterboards to extend pcie bandwith) I can use two tb 2 boards to create x8 bandwith 3) created a semi-public asana roadmap so you guys can see what progress I am making (ask if you want an invite [include a gmail that you wish to have added], currently there is no way to integrate an asana dashboard into javascript or a forum) So yeah, there are some pretty big improvements here and on the roadmap, I wish I could create multiple polls but for now ill just ask this here: Would you rather have the egpu be ~.5 in. shorter or have an extra slot for a daugherboard to increase bandwith ie (use two TB daugherboards for x8, use one TB and one expresscard/mpcie/m.2 for up to x7, use two usb 3.0 for x2) note : if you havent seen the roadmap yet after all of the boards have been completed, I will be releasing a spec sheet with IO for the daughterboards (people will be free to create their own if they have the time/money/experience, if they would like after creation I would add their product to the site and they would get up to 50% royalties. This is provided that their board does not duplicate an existing board and it is relitavely innovative in some way. edit : just remember, I am attempting to create an easy to use product that is a fully extendable standard. This is not a duplicate of existing products, it is a reimagination of what egpus could be while extending the market to those who may not understand how to dsdt or run freedos and navigate text menus, or edit kexts, or create a new efi partition for windows. In other words, NOT EVERYONE IS AS SMART AS YOU (dont feel too good about this, you are still surrounded by a group of equal any possibly smarter peers).

No it was the precursor. Lightpeak was integrated into the USB port not mini display. Same underlying technology but in some ways more useful. For instance the dock wouldn't have to use up some of the pcie band with for all of its extra peripherals, it could dedicate it all to GPU and put them on usb

Sorry to break it to you guys but from looking at the pictures and the laptop specs, it appears that the egpu will be using lightpeak not thunderbolt. This makes sense as it would enforce brand loyalty (you would need their laptop) and also it seems intel is much more lenient with light peak (there is already an existing one for the vaio z AnandTech | Sony Updates Vaio Z: Light Peak and An External GPU).

I am going to be shipping from the US however if you need it outside I can look at the potential ramifications of sending it individually as gifts (as I see that most companies do) which avoids the taxes of importing large quantities of stock. - - - Updated - - - Just two notes: 1: I attempted to add a not interested button (yet I have no idea as to how I would edit a poll). 2: I looked at what bizon did and I can understand the communities issue with this as he was basically selling the already existing product. However (although there is not much I can do to prove it), I infact created many of the advancements made on this forum related to TB in paralell (if not ahead in case of my osx software and windows compatibility software [without chainloading]). I understand this does not justify selling a product in your mind, however one of the huge problems I had with the community before I got here was the difficulty I had understanding existing advancements, which is essentially not needed if a simple installer exists. So in fact I would be selling more than just the products inside and my board, it would also be the understanding that it would work with little to no setup, which (from what I can understand) no product gives now.

You have some very tangible points and I understand why you would and should be skeptical since I have noting to offer right now that wouldn't compromise the integrity of what I intend to make. (Board schematics, part numbers, software etc). As for the communities ingenuity I have no doubt that my product will be replicated to some degree within a few months however in the short time I have been here there have been two notable gaps in creating an egpu, compactness and ease of setup both of which I wanted to achieve in a product in order to bring egpus to a larger community (not just the tech savvy also average gamers and video editors). Also I believe even if my egpu doesn't work out I can still sell my software

Just letting you know that the riser almost definitely wont work, it's missing pcie clock as well as 3.3v power

Yeah, for a while I was using a loaned MBP and got an entire setup working there. However since the donate button is likely why you are asking, disregard it I just decided to buy a tb laptop.

In case you didnt see previously, look at the edit to the main post and vote on the poll.

Shit I should have worked faster on the hardware side, I have had akitio working on my mac mini for upwards of 2 months, I have just been waiting to finish my product before I start selling my mac installer. I also have a windows installer in the works that converts existing installations into UEFI so they work directly with egpus. Might have it run on osx since my product is designed for macs, yet if there is enough desire I will compile it on a standalone linux drive aswell (sucks that freedos doesnt support uefi).

I am getting the parts within the next week. However I nolonger have an easy method to test my egpu setups. Thusly I am turning to you guys and anyone who wants a fairly priced egpu in a nice form factor, to help me raise money to get a cheap thunderbolt laptop (i found one for around $400 that I can hackintosh and work with). If you donate more than $25 you will recieve a % off order coupon upon the release of the egpu kit. (the release entirely depends on whether I can test it to iron out the design, so this project kinda rests on you guys. Right now you can donate via paypal and soon I will also have a bitcoin link up (if you are that kind of person). Just to show you guys I am serious, once I get to my laptop I will post some of my preliminary scripts for installing on mac, nothing major just support scripts (sorry but you will have to wait until the release to get the easy installers) <form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_top"> <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_donations"> <input type="hidden" name="business" value="UBTQ2TTSZA3ZG"> <input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US"> <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Scorched Earth Project"> <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"> <input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF:btn_donateCC_LG.gif:NonHosted"> <input type="image" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!"> <img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1"> </form>

Ok, so I have contacted my suppliers for the enclosure and have gotten a quote that is within reasonable range, I have my parts list sourced, and I am nearing the finishing touches on my custom pcb. All thats left is to test my theory about TB and then ill be ready to make kits and ship them.

Yeh sorry, was thinking of MXM. My big issue with using mpcie and m.2 is that every time you want to use an egpu you have to remove the bottom cover. If you are considering using a laptop as a desktop and just leaving it there, then m.2 is fine i just suggest getting one of the cooling pads that has a hole in the middle for cord management. If you have soldering experience you can rewire the mpcie or m.2 to external ports you dont use (i did one of the display ports and a usb 2 since my laptop had usb3) it makes portability much more feasable and keeps the setup neater.

Yes it is theoretically possible. However it would share many of mPCIe's problems such as mounting. However I suggest not to use bplus' adapter it wastes the bandwith of m.2, the protocol and many laptops support full x16 throuput from m.2 sockets. If you want to wait I could build you a kit of my egpu for m.2 connectivity. forum

I know i can definitely handle external hdmi /mini DP / dvi for the MXM version. Not sure how well optimus / virtuo would work though. - - - Updated - - - It is my understanding that the second lane is reserved for downstream devices ie (a tb hard drive), it would be theoretically possible to use a second tb chip and a custom riser to achieve x8 speeds however that would be rediculously expensive and would not offer enough gain to warrent the hassle.