Total CRASH of NUC 11 Enthusiast when a Thunderbolt adapter is plugged

[Johnbob]

Dear NUC Team,

I have finaly received yesterday my Intel NUC 11 Enthusiast (Phantom Canyon - RNUC11PHKI7C000)  and mounted 32GB DDR4 Ram + 2TB M.2 NVMe. I bought it for music production, I selected this hardware for its compactness, low noise and  Thunderbolt capability. Hardware and software installation went very well. Great so far.

Then, I plugged into the Thunderbolt USB-C ports (I tried both front and back ports):

- A thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbot 2 adapter (https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMEL2AM/A/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-to-thunderbolt-2-adapter) : almost the only on the market recommended by many users/communities/forums for its compatibility and reliability, robustness. 

- then a Thunderbolt 2 to firewire adapter : working fine for the last 8 years without any issue (https://www.apple.com/de/shop/product/MD464ZM/A/apple-thunderbolt-auf-firewire-adapter)

and then BANG ! : I got the uggly Windows crash Blues screen. Windows Home10 (with all latests updates ) completely Crashed and rebooted infinitely until I unplug both adapters.

I have installed the latest thunderbolt software driver.

I can reproduce the Crash systematically.

I am quite disapointed because I thought I could finally enjoy a state of the art thunderbolt PC in a peacefull way !

Any workaround ? Patch ?

I am really considering sending it back and give up with NUC. It would be sad.

Cheers

John Bob

NB: my goal is then to continue to use my firewire Audio Interface Roland EDIROL FA-101, behind the 2 broadly used thunderbolt adapters.

[Alberto_R_Intel]

Johnbob, Thank you for posting in the Intel® Communities Support.

In reference to this scenario, just to let you know, pretty much you tried all the troubleshooting steps that we recommend for this scenario in order to try to fix this problem. Besides that, one more thing that it is important to mention is to make sure that the latest BIOS version is currently installed in your Intel® NUC, which is 0063:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19729/bios-update-phtgl579.html?wapkw=nuc11phki7c

Keep in mind that we do not recommend to use adapters/converters since we cannot guarantee that they will operate as expected along with the Intel® NUC, they might or might not work with your system. For this specific case, the problem seems to be related to compatibility between the Intel® NUC and the adapters being used. For example, you mentioned "working fine for the last 8 years without any issue", and the Intel® NUC was released just 8 months ago, so it is expected to have compatibility issues since 2 very different technologies are being used:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000026412/graphics.html

"I am really considering sending it back and give up with NUC", in this situation that you need to use "my firewire Audio Interface Roland EDIROL FA-101, behind the 2 broadly used thunderbolt adapters" it seems that unfortunately, that will be the way to go, from our side there are no more suggestions that we can provide to fix this predicament, and it is not that the Intel® NUC nor the adapters are defective, is just that they are not compatible with each other.

Any questions, please let me know.

Regards,

Albert R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Johnbob]

Hello Albert,

Thank you for your fast, polite and detailed answer.

I have updated the bios, following the links (now I have SMBIOS Version: 3.3, Embedded Controller Version, 12.19, BIOS Mode: UEFI...)

Unfortunately the crash with windows blue screen still occurs, when I plug the 2 adapters and the audio interface.

I can understand the Intel argument (which will always be valid at anytime during the human kind existence, by any hardware provider): "We can't test every devices and all thunderbolt adapters". 

But as Intel is one of the leader of the Thunderbolt standard (and Apple is an ambassador of Thunderbolt), I would expect that plugin a thunderbolt adapter TB3 to TB2, followed by TB2 to Firewire adapter provoques a "unknown driver error" but not a system Crash !

Crash means for me that it is an unstable system.

And crash means that I can't even create my own driver.

There are on the internet people that manage to run firewire on TB3 (through the TB3toTB2 adapter), by customizing their driver. But because of the crash, I can't even try this solution.

Should I send the validation team my cables so that they add them to their test bench ?

Kind regards

John Bob

PS: For the sake of environment and climate crisis it also makes sense to be able to reuse older device, instead of throwing them away and purchase new ones. That reason motivated me to keep my working audio interface running on a newer PC.

[Alberto_R_Intel]

Hello Johnbob, You are very welcome, thank you very much for sharing those details.

In reference to your question "Should I send the validation team my cables so that they add them to their test bench ?", I will double-check on that possibility and as soon as I get any updates I will post all the information on this thread.

Regards,

Albert R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Ronny_G_Intel]

Hi @Johnbob,

I am really sorry to hear that you are having issues with our NUC in combination with Thunderbolt adapters. We encourage customers to use straight connections and no cable adapters as much as possible due to potential compatibility issues, in the same line, Apple* is highly customized and in most cases they use their own specifications which makes validation and compatibility much more difficult, we usually do not test or validate Apple* products with our NUCs, please refer to the NUC compatibility list: https://compatibleproducts.intel.com/ProductDetails?activeModule=Intel%C2%AE%20NUC#

If you can test any other Thunderbolt device (the NUC has 2x Thunderbolt 4 ports) using a straight connection without adapters and the device works as expected that would confirm that the NUC is in good working order and that this is, unfortunately, a compatibility related issue.

Regards,

Ronny G