4 ms·

Can you not use a thunderbolt switch? In my home office, I've got two monitors and a switch to flick input between a personal machine and a work machine.

by gen220 5y ago

techpression 5y ago
Do they actually work well (I actually want to know)? I once started looking into something like that and it seemed to be all pain and suffering to get it to work or it having weird behaviours. If you have a product that you know work I'm all ears, it would make my life a lot easier.
- gen220 5y ago
  I currently do this with HDMIs (I somehow make do with a measley 4K monitors). I assumed such a thing existed for thunderbolt but hadn't looked into it; it looks like you're right that this market is underdeveloped at present. Hopefully somebody does it! Or, the wisdom of HN will yield us some options. Otherwise, if you're willing to settle for affordable retina-quality monitors, this is the one I use: https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B01LPNKFK0 https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B01LPNKFK0. Cribbed from this post which made the HN rounds not too long ago: https://www.caseyliss.com/2021/12/7/monitor-liss https://www.caseyliss.com/2021/12/7/monitor-liss
kitsunesoba 5y ago
Last I looked, Thunderbolt switches were prohibitively expensive and only made by oddball companies. My solution is a Thunderbolt dock (CalDigit TS3+/TS4+, ThinkPad Thunderbolt 4 Dock, etc) along with a TB cable for each machine that I swap the connection to the dock with as needed. Since it's a single cable swap, it's not much of an inconvenience.
spudlyo 5y ago
I use an IOGEAR Thunderbolt 2 KVM[0] that lets you switch thunderbolt between two computers. I use this in conjunction with three TB2 -> TB3 adapters[1] and a CalDigit TS3+[2] (which drives my DisplayPort monitor). It's janky, but it works, and I don't really notice the speed difference dropping down to TB2 speeds since the only TB3 peripheral I hang off the CalDigit is an audio interface. At some point I actually had a TB2 only computer I wanted to KVM switch with a TB3 laptop so this weird setup made more sense then. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M74Y03E https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M74Y03E [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MQ26QIY https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MQ26QIY [2]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CZPV8DF https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CZPV8DF

Can you not use a thunderbolt switch? In my home office, I've got two monitors and a switch to flick input between a personal machine and a work machine.

by gen220 5y ago

Can you not use a thunderbolt switch? In my home office, I've got two monitors and a switch to flick input between a personal machine and a work machine.

techpression 5y ago

Do they actually work well (I actually want to know)? I once started looking into something like that and it seemed to be all pain and suffering to get it to work or it having weird behaviours. If you have a product that you know work I'm all ears, it would make my life a lot easier.

gen220 5y ago
I currently do this with HDMIs (I somehow make do with a measley 4K monitors). I assumed such a thing existed for thunderbolt but hadn't looked into it; it looks like you're right that this market is underdeveloped at present. Hopefully somebody does it! Or, the wisdom of HN will yield us some options. Otherwise, if you're willing to settle for affordable retina-quality monitors, this is the one I use: https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B01LPNKFK0 https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B01LPNKFK0. Cribbed from this post which made the HN rounds not too long ago: https://www.caseyliss.com/2021/12/7/monitor-liss https://www.caseyliss.com/2021/12/7/monitor-liss

kitsunesoba 5y ago

Last I looked, Thunderbolt switches were prohibitively expensive and only made by oddball companies. My solution is a Thunderbolt dock (CalDigit TS3+/TS4+, ThinkPad Thunderbolt 4 Dock, etc) along with a TB cable for each machine that I swap the connection to the dock with as needed. Since it's a single cable swap, it's not much of an inconvenience.

spudlyo 5y ago

I use an IOGEAR Thunderbolt 2 KVM[0] that lets you switch thunderbolt between two computers. I use this in conjunction with three TB2 -> TB3 adapters[1] and a CalDigit TS3+[2] (which drives my DisplayPort monitor). It's janky, but it works, and I don't really notice the speed difference dropping down to TB2 speeds since the only TB3 peripheral I hang off the CalDigit is an audio interface. At some point I actually had a TB2 only computer I wanted to KVM switch with a TB3 laptop so this weird setup made more sense then. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M74Y03E https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M74Y03E [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MQ26QIY https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MQ26QIY [2]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CZPV8DF https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CZPV8DF