A dock that wakes up reliably

https://fabiensanglard.net/tb4/index.html

by ingve • 11 days ago

98 65 11 days ago

hinkley• 11 days ago

I had the first generation Anker TB2 doc and that was the first time I ever saw them produce a product that was a dud.

They sent me a replacement and I had the same problems. Then found out it was a design problem not a manufacturing one. They could send me 10 more and they would still not wake up all the ports properly. I don't even recall now what series of ritual steps I took to wake it up. I think unplugging it completely from everything. Which is actually more cable wear than not having a dock.

hankbond• 11 days ago

Please take this gently, but I did not really walk away from this post having gained anything. I don't have any problems with the post in isolation but I just don't feel it really offers enough weight to be here if that makes sense.

I read a few of your other posts and your writing style is direct and pleasant in a way I appreciate. Thank you for actually writing things.

TrainedMonkey• 11 days ago

The author does not call it out, but I think the point is that it's not only the dock. I've been struggling with MBP wakeup issues for a while. We have a whole zoo of various apple devices attached to a number of docks. All of the monitors are Odyssey Neo G9. TL:DR an issue with MBP port, MBP to Dock link, Dock, Dock to Monitor link, or the monitor itself could cause the unplugging dance.

In addition, it takes some time for Apple to squash bugs after releasing new hardware or software. M5s used to be unreliable with Anker TB4 until 1-2 months ago.

bombcar2• 11 days ago

Us old people have the idea of peripherals as input (keyboard, mouse) or output (monitor, printer) - but they've all been input/output for two decades or more; and Thunderbolt and friends are much more like an Ethernet network (reliability of Wake on LAN, anyone?) than they are simple point-to-point connections.

Meaning - anything could be the device preventing what you expect to happen, even if it looks like it should be impossible and have nothing to do with it.

ramijames• 10 days ago

I struggled with a dock and a MBP and connecting consistently to a monitor. It was a high-quality USB-C to HDMI cable. I was sure it wasn't that.

Turns out it was that.

nashashmi2• 11 days ago

I’m hoping the comments will have a better insight into what’s happening

TacticalCoder• 11 days ago

I did not really walk away from this post having gained anything

Then my comment won't help you much: since I swapped my MacBook Air M1's 27" monitor for a 34" one from the same brand, it's only been the exact clusterfuck of unreliable "wake up not working properly anymore" for no friggin' reason. Except in my case it was working fine, and now it's not anymore.

nickelpro• 11 days ago

OP is not the author.

Fabien Sanglard's HN handle is fabiensanglard

jubilanti• 10 days ago

No idea how this made it to the front page. HN is not tech support.

dominotw• 11 days ago

ASUS ROG Swift (PG27UCDM)

any benefits in coding and reading hackernews

jolux2• 11 days ago

My experience with non-Apple Thunderbolt products has been pretty dicey across the board. My ASUS motherboard has a port and theoretically works with it but across several firmware, BIOS, and driver upgrades, I’ve never actually got it to successfully recognize my TS4 as a Thunderbolt device, only USB.

ainka-ainka• 11 days ago

Does the laptop have an AMD processor? This is expected behavior with them.

jolux2• 11 days ago

No, it’s a desktop with an Intel processor.

izacus• 11 days ago

Which part is expected? I had no issues having TB docks on my AMD laptops.

matt_daemon• 11 days ago

Anyone know what that keyboard is?

schaefer• 11 days ago

I think it's the 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard [1] with the "M edition" keycaps.

[1] https://www.8bitdo.com/retro-mechanical-keyboard-m/

nashashmi2• 11 days ago

I use two different docks. Dock 1 is a cheap chinese dock with some ports that worked (it has many ports). Dock 2 is hp g2 (an expensive dock). Occasionally the screen shuts off and resumes a second later in the dock 1. And resuming from sleep, the laptop doesn’t detect the keyboard. I figured it was until the laptop is fully up, I should not plug in the usb. On dock 2, the laptop goes to sleep and won’t turn back on from the keyboard until I press the power button.

turtleyacht• 11 days ago

Switching the monitor worked. Wonder if an HDMI dummy plug, a virtual monitor emulator, would have helped.

LennyHenrysNuts• 11 days ago

Never thought it could be the monitor. I have an HP dock with an HP laptop for work and it's totally unreliable waking from sleep.

My chances of getting new monitors are slim in this climate but it's a new avenue of investigation at least.

Lord_Zero• 11 days ago

Yeah and the author linked a $1100 monitor lmao

ahartmetz• 11 days ago

It's apparently some kind of fluke, maybe the 27" model is out of production. The 32" model costs a little over 700, which is the current price range. I just paid 640€ for an LG 32" 4K OLED (+165 Hz FreeSync) monitor.

altairprime• 11 days ago

USB4 or 240Hz monitors are more likely to have a modern HDMI/DP chipset, relative to 60Hz monitors. It’s not a certain relationship but it can be a useful filter for dreck to narrow one’s choices to monitors that support either USB4, or 4K at 75+ fps, since that wipes out a lot of old HDMI 2.0 chipsets — which is a useful, if imperfect, proxy for Thunderbolt chipset quality. A monitor that’s just trying to hit $100 will cheerfully target old HDMI and old DisplayPort with random-old-DSC. For Apple gear, random crap like that will typically end up being a disaster for Apple laptops, anyways, because Apple takes for granted that all of those stacks are in sync and before USB4 they rarely were.

userbinator• 11 days ago

Thunderbolt/USB-C protocols are basically at the edge of what's electrically possible. If you look at Ethernet equipment that's roughly in the same speed range and notice how much it costs, it's clear there are heavy tradeoffs with the consumer stuff.

ak217• 11 days ago

I use a bunch of Lenovo Thunderbolt docks, with both Macbooks and Thinkpads. The older models go for as little as $20 used nowadays. I had to update the firmware on the really old ones, but after that they work flawlessly and let me connect 2x4k60 monitors.

OptionOfT• 11 days ago

I have a ThinkPad Thunderbolt 4 Workstation Dock - Type 40B0.

Last time a firmware update came out I couldn't run it from my Lenovo laptop. I had to use a non-Lenovo one. Really made me angry about their quality control.

Next to that the dock has this weird behavior when the laptop is asleep, the monitors wake up every 5 minutes.

golem14• 11 days ago

I think there's a solid case for someone to make a monitor with a working, built-in dock. I mean, many monitors already have USB-outs for keyboards and 2nd displays and such.

I think monitors are a sweet spot - they tend to stick around longer than computers, and docks really don't need to change a lot over time, at least now with thunderbolt out there. Fewer cables, too.

I like the idea of standalone docks, and I purchased a few, but none reliably worked for me.

wonnage• 11 days ago

Dell has a few. I have the U2723QE. It reliably wakes up my Windows desktop but waking up my Macbook is a crapshoot. I'm pretty sure the issue is in Apple's software, not the docks.

awakeasleep• 11 days ago

I've been following this issue pretty closely, and it's not only Macs that have this problem with dell monitors, if you check out the dell support forum there are various PC users reporting the problem even dell precision users. Also there are various other problems with the monitor firmware like it crashing and needing to be restarted etc.

Additionally, if you look at the firmware updates they published for the successor U2725QE you'll see things[0] again not specific to Macs like

* resolves monitor wake-from-sleep issues; and * resolves daisy-chained monitors not waking from standby;

Which may not be exactly the same bug, but probably is & it shows the problems are getting addressed in Dell's own firmware

[0]https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetai...

appplication• 11 days ago

Could not agree more it makes a ton of sense

m463• 11 days ago

Some monitors kind of do this. They have usb-c connectors for laptop video and charing and can do kvm-ish stuff, having a usb hub for talking to a keyboard and mouse (switchable between inputs).

look for dell monitors with kvm

enlightens• 11 days ago

I have a ViewSonic ultrawide like this, picked it up as a factory refurb from their eBay account. Makes it incredibly easy to switch between work and personal laptops (Mac and pc), as well as a gaming tower.

sbuttgereit• 11 days ago

I have a Samsung Odyssey Neo G9 monitor which basically does this. It basically has a simple KVM built into it. So my keyboard and mouse connect to the monitor, but then the monitor is connected to my desktop and a laptop. Using the monitor controls, I select which system I am using and get the display for that system as well as the keyboard/mouse activated for that system. There are different options for having them both on screen at once, but only one active for the controls, but I don't find that as useful as just having one system at a time being the sole focus.

shepherdjerred• 11 days ago

Apple's monitors fill this gap, but they are obviously quite expensive

randallsquared2• 10 days ago

And they are not immune: a few years ago when I was using an Apple Studio Display, it had a similar issue where sometimes it would not wake from sleep, and the only workaround was to unplug it and wait NN seconds for cap discharge, and then plug it back in. (There's no power switch, so no other way to restart the CPU in it). After a number of updates, it no longer seems to do this, or at least the current user of it hasn't mentioned any such issue.

dgellow• 11 days ago

That has been a thing since a while, look for „Dell hub monitor“. I personally love the Ultrasharp series, with RJ45, usb C, USB A, audio, etc

erdaltoprak• 11 days ago

My OWC Thunderbolt Pro dock is still the most feature packed one with 10g and good heat dissipation

rage8885• 11 days ago

Mine is great for the most part but every so often the ethernet just stops working and only restarting the dock by unplugging it will fix it

user43928• 10 days ago

I have a OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock and it also had issues with waking up.

What seems to work reliably is monitors directly into the MacBook Pro via HDMI and USB-C, keyboard, mouse, audio into the OWC Dock.

phendrenad2• 11 days ago

I just looked up who runs the Thunderbolt specification, and was surprised to see that it's owned by Intel. But Thunderbolt 4 was donated to the USB Implementers Forum so maybe that's why things are improving.

antod• 11 days ago

My Lenovo Thunderbolt 3 docks wakes up reliably, the problem is that it keeps randomly nodding off for a second or so causing the monitor to lose signal and have to sleep/wake itself.

bana-io• 11 days ago

What I would have done is tested it with an Android phone. My Samsung S26 Ultra allows me to connect to an external display via a USB C hub. So the test setup would be:

1. Plug the phone into hub.

2. Check that you get display output, the mouse and keyboard are working whilst the screen is not turned off and the phone is not locked.

3. Lock the screen and wait for the screen to turn off, thereby mimicking suspend.

4. Try to make the phone resume by using the attached keyboard and/or mouse.

If all goes well, the monitor should turn on after unlocking the phone or using the keyboard / mouse.

# Other things to try

Again try and reproduce the issue with a Samsung tablet that supports display out via USB C.

Connect the keyboard via Bluetooth and try to make the laptop resume. I found that connecting a Keychron keyboard via bluetooth allowed me to resume a Macbook Pro. I was kinda surprised that this worked.

Does the same issue occur on Linux as well?

I guess you could attach a USB packet type of debugger to ensure that data is being sent to the laptop by attaching the debugger to the cable that connects to the host machine. If you see USB traffic when the monitor goes to sleep and you are pressing keys in the keyboard and the dock still has power that means the dock is working fine so you can rule that out.

CTDOCodebases• 11 days ago

My Android Phone will connect to my dock and all connected hardware functions as expected but it doesn't charge the phone. After the first disconnect subsequent connections to the phone will just charge the phone but the phone does not detect the hardware connected to the dock. If I then remove the power cord going into the dock and connect the dock up to the phone then no hardware is detected but if I then proceed to insert the power cord into the dock the hardware connected to the dock starts working but the phone is not charging.

It's a cheap phone with a USB-C port that works at USB2 speeds and the dock uses display-link but go figure.

wpm2• 11 days ago

I wish I could have submitted this entire thread as an exhibit to every commenter in the "Mac Pro Discontinued" thread from a few months ago telling me "jUsT uSe tHuNDeRbOLT!"

stavros• 11 days ago

Was the alternative immune to misbehaving devices?

wpm2• 10 days ago

Does "better" somehow imply immunity?

phs318u• 11 days ago

I hate to say but this thread gives me comfort that: a) it’s not just me, b) it’s not my particularly unfortunate combination of hardware, and c) I made the right call to permanently retire my Caldigit TS4 and rely on my Lenovo ultra-wide monitor’s ports.

Learning this lesson (on the unreliability of systems using a very expensive docks) cost me over $1200 in chopping and changing hardware in the last few years.

firecall• 11 days ago

On a similar note, I still do not understand why I have to plug a USB Flash Drive into my Mac twice for it to mount.

I take modern USB-C Flash Drive, plug it into my Mac. Nothing. Take it out, plug it in again, and it mounts just fine.

Same with SD Cards.

I have no idea why this is, and I'm not sure if it's always been this way, but I can't remember a time when I didn't have to do this.

trelane• 11 days ago

Maybe 2027 will finally be the Year of Apple on the Desktop!

artisinal• 10 days ago

Do you have multiple accounts active at the same time? That was buggy for me.

zhouzhao• 10 days ago

Omg, I have the same problem under linux, no idea why. dmesg just reports nothing on the first time, second time, it just works

dorjoy• 11 days ago

It was nice to see one of Ronaldo Nazario's iconic moment on the wall.

randallsquared2• 10 days ago

MY CalDigit TS4 is not what I would have blamed for this issue, given that every time it happens for me, opening the lid of my Mac shows that it's asking, again, if this CalDigit accessory should be allowed to connect. This used to happen after every single reboot, but now it's rare, though I haven't changed anything about the setup in a year. I attributed this to MacOS problems, for that reason.

torginus2• 10 days ago

These smart peripheral protocols suck balls.

The VGA->DVI->HDMI chain retained the following simplicity of: 1. Send color of pixel 2. At the end of the line + blank send a pulse on HSYNC pin 3. At the end of the screen send a signal on the VSYNC pic. That's it (almost, there's EDID). If you can implement this, chances are you can display what's sent down the cable accurately. Likewise with audio, you just send a voltage level down the cable, if you want to be fancy, you use SPDIF, in which case you send a 16-24 bit number per channel.

That's it, no handshake, no negotiation.

I have a TB dock for my Macbook. Sometimes it doesn't register. Sometimes it reboots for some reason, giving me 10 seconds of black screen. There's a 10% chance on every connect or reboot that it will just plainly not work.

And it's way better than it used to be, but still pretty bad.

mschuster912• 10 days ago

That's it, no handshake, no negotiation.

The thing is, the old protocols all have their limitations.

Analog audio - unless it's balanced - is highly vulnerable to all sorts of external interference. S/PDIF is normally two channels of PCM audio (that's decently easy), but it can carry up to 8 channels of variously compressed audio and not every sink or source supports all possible codecs (thanks to software patent licensing BS). In either case, 48 kHz sample rate and 20 bits precision are the fundamental limits.

For video... analog maps well to CRT displays but reconstructing signals from analog inputs in a TFT/LED screen is inherently a lossy process, and running anything more than 1080p is a gamble and requires good, short cables. And digital video at higher data rates becomes a nasty mess and practically devolves into RF black wizardry at the kind of stuff you can pull off with modern digital video signalling - 4K @ 240 Hz refresh rate, this is utter insanity if you just think how much data is being shovelled around.

torginus2• 10 days ago

I an not suggesting analog.. HDMI and DVI are fully digital, yet they retain the same dead simple signaling of VGA... at least for sending images, all the added features on HDMI, such as content protection and embedding other signals into the blank period are just as sucky and error prone as other digital protocols.

GTP• 10 days ago

I have a Dell usb C dock that I got from a company that was going to trow it away. My issue is with charging. It used to work with the Dell laptops they were using, but it has a weird behavior with my HP laptop. If I connect the laptop to the dock when the laptop is off, charging works. If I instead plug in the laptop while it's running, most of the times it doesn't start charging it. I have either to disconnect and reconnect a few times, or I have to pull the dock's plug and reinsert it again. Any idea why? Did anyone else observe a similar behavior?

UI_at_80x24• 10 days ago

Dell chargers only work (reliably, and at capacity) with Dell devices. Also Dell devices will (sometimes) refuse to work with 3rd party chargers.

Get a charger that displays the voltage & current being output on a port and you will quickly see what devices adhere to standards.

The USC-C port doesn't guarantee compatibility. Manufacturers are being evil and pushing proprietary protocols over open standards.

ricardobeat• 10 days ago

Peripherals seem to still suck as much as they did in the 90s. Reliability is a completely unpredictable quality.

My Macbook Air + LG Ultrafine combo works flawlessly.

A brand new Ryzen 9 system + recent model AOC monitor, on Windows, using DisplayPort, refuses to come back from sleep every single time.

lylejantzi3rd• 10 days ago

I have a similar setup with 2 2016 MPB M1s connected to an LG ULTRAGEAR+ display via a UGREEN KVM and a Minthouz Dock. Switching between them got to be so annoying that I had to disable sleep on both devices using this command:

    sudo pmset disablesleep 1

You would think this would negatively affect battery life when the laptop isn't docked, but I haven't noticed much of a change. It's also nice to be able to shut the lid on a whim instead of trying to keep the lid open so my downloads don't turn off while I'm moving from one room to another.

A dock that wakes up reliably

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