PC Peripherals Need help with TB3: Someone with a TB3 laptop/PC in Delhi

[blackhorn]

So the story goes like this, I wanted to centralize my storage as I have a few hard disks. So I bought a Dell TB16 thunderbolt 3 dock from the classifieds. I have a mac mini 2018, so it was relatively straight forward or so I thought. I stupidly also didn't consider the fact that TB3 and USB-c are not the same thing. USB-C is the connector and TB3 is a protocol if you will. Now I got the dock and it powered up fine but the TB3 led on the connector didn't light up, I connected it to my windows machine (not understanding that its not tb3 capable) and assumed the dock was broken. I digged deeper and understood the difference. However, the dock didn't work with the mac mini because its firmware wasn't upgraded, and it should have been for it to be compatible. I genuinely wanted to make sure the dock wasn't broken. I asked family and friends around if they had a tb3 capable laptop but to no avail until a FM humored me last week. The LED on the connector worked and the dock was connected but since I was in a hurry and I didn't want to impose on the FM, after a few tried trying to upgrade the FW which didn't work, I decided to call it quits. So this post is now my last hail mary. If anyone in Delhi has a an aforementioned TB3 capable laptop/PC who is willing to let me do some research and try to upgrade the FW, please let me know via PM. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Have a great day.

 

[superczar]

So the story goes like this, I wanted to centralize my storage as I have a few hard disks. So I bought a Dell TB16 thunderbolt 3 dock from the classifieds. I have a mac mini 2018, so it was relatively straight forward or so I thought. I stupidly also didn't consider the fact that TB3 and USB-c are not the same thing. USB-C is the connector and TB3 is a protocol if you will. Now I got the dock and it powered up fine but the TB3 led on the connector didn't light up, I connected it to my windows machine (not understanding that its not tb3 capable) and assumed the dock was broken. I digged deeper and understood the difference. However, the dock didn't work with the mac mini because its firmware wasn't upgraded, and it should have been for it to be compatible. I genuinely wanted to make sure the dock wasn't broken. I asked family and friends around if they had a tb3 capable laptop but to no avail until a FM humored me last week. The LED on the connector worked and the dock was connected but since I was in a hurry and I didn't want to impose on the FM, after a few tried trying to upgrade the FW which didn't work, I decided to call it quits. So this post is now my last hail mary. If anyone in Delhi has a an aforementioned TB3 capable laptop/PC who is willing to let me do some research and try to upgrade the FW, please let me know via PM. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Have a great day.

The Dell WD TB devices should be compatible OOTB with Macs.
I have two WD19TBs and while a FW upgrade is good to have, the base firmware itself was fully compatible with the Macbook before doing any FW upgrades.
(I use them interchangeably between windows laptops and MacBooks - and if anything, I have had more compatibility/ handshake issues with Windows machines while the MacBooks have always run flawlessly with it .)

Do one thing - connect the TB16 to your Mac . Go to system information and see what you see under Hardware > Thunderbolt> Thunderbolt / USB4 device tree