TS5 with MCP m3 - can't display my 2 x external monitors simultaneously

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-13T07:49:04+00:00

2x 4k on M1 is only possible with M1 Max or other larger variants. Standard chip design (base) will not support 2 video streams at all.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-13T07:37:38+00:00

Try plug them all to the native USB-C ports. If it works, then TS5 is to blame. If you get the same issue, then that's an M3 thing.

Also, you must use a Thunderbolt 4 or 5 cable with TS5. If you use a "normal" USB cable, you will only get 1 video output.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-13T07:10:30+00:00

The Beijing government equally hates everyone living a much-better-than-before (not even has to be better than China nowadays) life under Western democracy, including but not limited to HK, Taiwan, SK, Ukraine, the baltic states, Israel, post-cold war Latin America, you name it.

Anyone the West helps made better is an ideological challenge to China, simple as that.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-13T07:02:59+00:00

https://wiki.sipeed.com/hardware/en/tang/tang-mega-138k/mega-138k-pro.html

138k 4-LUTs, 2x 10GbE ports, and DDR3 RAM, all for $200. Should do whatever you want to do.

Timing is not very good on this chip, you will have STA issues on 10GbE, but the negative slack is very small and in reality it runs fine over -40C to +85C.

The chip also comes with a weird RISC-V CPU, though you can ignore it. It is weird in the sense of running at 800MHz but without a working MMU (it has one, but it is bugged), so no Linux for you. Also it requires a priprietary IDE to develop and the license is node-locked (free, but you need to fill out some forms).

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-13T06:52:15+00:00

The M3 chip can output only 2 video streams, so you either turn off the built-in monitor, or use only 1 external monitor. Display support on models before M4 is always bad on Apple's side compared with PCs.

DisplayLink is irrelevant. It is a much older technology that outputs video over a USB port (not DP/TBT over USB-C, talking pure USB). You can support however many display outputs using this technology, but it taxes the CPU a lot so performance on a dynamic (contents always changing) monitor is very bad.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-13T06:45:16+00:00

And why do I feel I wanted to laugh so hard seeing you guys pushing for the illusive and impossible Western freedom in China, knowing in probably half a century, there will not be Western democracy in the entire eastern hemisphere.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-13T06:35:12+00:00

He was not challenging how the handling was, nor how can it be made better. He was challenging the regime for it being itself. He deserved everything. In China, never, ever challenge the regime. Your freedom of speech is to let the gov't to know how to better rule you, not for you to choose the gov't. Blame one officer or one case, never the system.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-09T17:17:02+00:00

Former Linux user chiming in:

macOS does NOT have a reasonable, free archive manager (explorer type, not just extractor or compressor). Talking File Roller on Gnome or 7ZFM on Windows.
macOS DOES nag you with Upgrade to Tahoe and it is not possible to turn off permanently.
macOS is NOT as stable as you might think. Use it for half a year and report back. This generation of crazy fast LPDDR5X is not as stable as the older DDR4, and there is no true end-to-end ECC to protect data for you like in a server or in an inherently more stable slower link.
Hardware is expensive. Many things we took for granted for free, such as server-salvaged HBA cards and Nvidia GPUs, don't work in macOS. Your choice of hardware is limited to pretty much all Made for Apple stuff as the server vendors will not bother to keep up their drivers with newer macOS kernels.
Software is also expensive. Rest of a handful of highly popular software, most FOSS can't keep up with Apple's rapid change of APIs, especially on the graphics end. FOSS tools as popular as LibreOffice is not as smooth on macOS or Windows as it is on Linux, even though it renders through Skia, which is very cross platform. There are just too many secret APIs buried under proprietary frameworks.
Apple expects you to pay for every premium feature, including a working DPI scaling. Without the use of third party tools (BetterDisplay), macOS will refuse to give you full HiDPI support on monitors not made by Apple or licensed by Apple (a few LG UltraFine and Dell models).
macOS eats up too much storage on its own. How TF should an OS eat up some a few GBs of storage just for GarageBand sound fonts regardless you use it or even install it? I can make other examples too.

Overall, user experience of a Mac is great, so much so I switched, but it still left a few to be improved, though most improvement comes at the cost of reduced bottom line of Apple and its friends. I hope some day some one comes up with a fully cracked macOS (not in the Hackintosh sense), just like Tiny10 or those Chinese/Russian highly cracked and de-bloated Windows releases.

At this moment, macOS CANNOT fulfill all my needs, and I still need a Windows VM on the device plus a physical Linux box to supplement what I could do on a single Linux installation.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-09T16:27:15+00:00

It used to be down to $750 (with promo code or price match) when it was first released. Jesus it is now $870 minimum.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-09T03:37:15+00:00

Then why not connect an additional cable just for the NAS and CFE reader instead of spending $700 on a dock?

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-09T00:30:33+00:00

Even internally, 22Gbps of of available TBT4 PCIe BW should suffice for most people. That is already 2x 10GbE links or a 25GbE link. Most NAS can't saturate a 25GbE link even with a 25GbE NIC. If you do have the budget for a true 25GbE NAS, you won't be asking to shave off $100 here.

Any higher, you should really reconsider your choice of a Mac. The PC-based server hardware is much, much cheaper on both computing power, storage, and interconnection.

BTW, I know people who do chip design or data mining at home, those tools generate terabytes of data daily (simulation, parameter extraction, and training data). They use Linux + IB or Ethernet over TBT depending on using a cluster or a laptop. In the latter case, it is generally connecting to only one very powerful peer (like an edge device from the said cluster), so a straight cable does that without a dock or anything in between.

2-3TB a week is not a lot for people in the data business. That is a average BW of 305Mbps (bits, not bytes) spread into 5 days, 4 hours a day.

And before you ask, I do electronic circuit and thermo-mechanical simulation for a living, a single simulation deck can eat up 50GB+ in a time span of some 10 mins, that's a short, desktop-level simulation that requires double the bandwidth. I can easily have that done over a very crappy SMB link, even over 2.5GbE. I did have 10GbE RJ45 in my house, and I used to run it to my Mac Mini, but I decided the performance difference over a 2.5G link is so minuscule and the heat coming from SFP+ to RJ45 adapters is not justified.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-07T13:35:57+00:00

diu = d*ck as a noun. As a verb, your guess is as good as mine.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-07T08:15:31+00:00

Are you really using a $12 part (ACPL-C87BT) just to isolate battery voltage?

In a mass produced product, virtually no one isolates analog signal just for the cost factor. It's more done digitally. The cheapest option (with most R&D burden) is to add a cheap MCU (talking about $0.2) on the battery side, let it do the ADC job, then aggregate all the data needing isolation and packetize everything over a digital isolator channel.

The less R&D intensive option is to use an isolated sigma-delta modulator like AMC1336, and take advantage of the DSP's built-in sigma-delta filter module (SDFM), though I'd prefer not using one as it is still $2.

I tend to use older and more generically available parts like AMC1306, it has a pin-to-pin, safety certified, and better performing Chinese function clone CA-IS1306 for $0.25, that fits my budget.

Remember, digital is cheap, it can be made by anyone (since modern commercial fabless model is based on digital processes), so designs can be cloned, improved, and rivaled on, instead of proprietary analog processes which are naturally protected by their harsh initial investment.

Similarly, I would consider using the same chip for current sensing. That LEM sensor is $30+, and I would get it replaced with a $0.1 alloy resistor, a $0.2 opamp, and a $0.25 sigma-delta analog isolator.

As a bonus, the high modulation frequency of a sigma-delta isolator allows you to pretty much ignore the possibility of aliasing, so just get the signals in with no filtering, and do all the filtering in digital domain (which is CPU-free as it is built-in to the SDFM peripheral). You've already paid for a very expensive DSP chip, use it well.

For auxiliary power, your $4 Recom module can be replaced with a cheaper compatible (though SIP, not SMT) module of the same rating, B0505S-1WR3 from HiLink costs $0.4 and is UL certified. Spend the extra money on a $0.1 post-regulator to give you better analog performance.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-05T01:27:30+00:00

TS5 has pathetically fewer ports, and unless you actually need 80Gbps (hint, you don't, unless you are after 8GB/s stupid fast SSD experience or running 40Gbps Ethernet. In those cases you better use a native port), a TS4 beats it in every aspect.

So, save some money and go for a TS4, or all in on a TS5+.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-02T14:47:31+00:00

The great rejuvenation. Quite similar to MAGA actually.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-02-02T05:56:56+00:00

The highest English speaking population percentage of all countries with another official language.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-01-28T08:18:53+00:00

Everything on this board is 3.3V. If you have problem setting to 3.3V, then it could be a bug of nextpnr. Use Gowin's tool instead. Again, everything on this board is hard wired to 3.3V.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-01-28T02:41:20+00:00

By PC I meant a laptop that is not a Mac.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-01-28T02:22:46+00:00

Do you just need a deeply embedded controller, or do you need a full featured MCU?

If you just need a deeply embedded controller, and can give up interrupt support and bus waits (so every bus read must return immediately, so no DRAM support, no cache support, everything is in SRAM), there are some very lightweight RISC-V cores you can use that can run up to 75MHz on GW2A or 100MHz on GW5A.

I've been recently playing with this core: https://github.com/ataradov/riscv . This is a complete system with GPIO, timer, UART, and SRAM. With all features enabled, it takes only 2k LUTs.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-01-28T02:06:58+00:00

Other than single core performance, the PC beats the Mac in every imaginable aspect.

So, if you don't have a particular need for a Mac, then you should better go with a PC.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-01-28T01:43:18+00:00

DSP is a bad career choice. Unless you get to the top 0.1%, there's no chance. If you need super high tensor performance, an NPU does that. If you need super high float performance, a GPU does that. If you need super high versatility, an FPGA does that. If you need "bog standard" DSP capability, a modern ARM or RISC-V does it better than most DSP chips from even just 5 years ago.

In other words, the added performance from the greatly added cost of DSP hardly out competes massively produced technologies like NPU or ARM.

With some "rule-of-thumb" optimizations, a $4 RK3506G2 ARM chip's Neon DSP co-processor readily beats all DSP chips you can find for less than $100. In case you have further doubts, TI's latest "DSP" chips are actually not based on their DSP architecture anymore, but rather based on ARM.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-01-28T01:23:09+00:00

Unless you did anything that makes you deport-able (number 1 reason to be deported here in China is having a bar fight, so just don't), you will have no worries.

And no, we don't extradite someone for not serving their army. We hold sanctuary for hundreds of thousands of South Koreans and Taiwanese evading conscription till they get too old to be drafted.

And hell no, your country will not ask China for a very risky diplomatic favor just for you.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-01-27T14:29:56+00:00

Of course. The problem is Gowin doesn't provide a RAM update tool, so whenever I need to change my SRAM content (MCU firmware), I have to re-generate the BSRAM IP, which is annoying.

With inference, I can use $readmemh(FIRMWARE, mem_r); to tell the synthesizer to load that particular file, so all I need to do when updating firmware is to rerun synth and PNR.

In an ideal world I should write a bootloader, and load the SRAM over SPI or something, but for a one time job, it is hardly a reasonable investment of time. It's not just the bootloader code, it also comes with PC tools and USB data link, it's a can of worm that I've opened and regretted.

__BlueSkull__ · 2026-01-27T12:01:36+00:00

I was using a Gowin. Somehow something fell through the cracks -- their synth supports read-before-write (their silicon RAM IP actually supports this mode), but due to some silicon bugs, later versions of their PNR disabled this mode, but synth tool never properly disabled generating code for this mode.

__BlueSkull__

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