Currently, we have a 27” Thunderbolt display in our Key West service department for repair. The display will routinely shut off during video/processor-intensive applications (usually running pro software).
I was unable to recreate the issue when it was connected to any computer in the service department, so I contacted the customer, who offered to bring in his Mac Pro and recreate it for me. Once hooked up to his Mac Pro, it happened immediately.
My first thoughts were that it had to be a logic board, hard drive, or video card failure in the machine itself. I then ran the Storage Diagnostic tool and the hard drive failed. However, I couldn’t rule out that it wasn’t anything else in addition to that since the logic board could still be affected due to the three internal expansion slots.
I moved the installed video card to one expansion slot, then to another, and the symptoms continued. Before calling it a day though, I needed to check the video card itself. I installed a different, known-good video card, and was unable to recreate the machine’s symptoms in any of the expansion slots.
Diagnosis: Failed hard drive and video card. I ordered and installed both parts, and the symptoms disappeared. The Mac Pro and Thunderbolt Display are now functioning properly.
The Mac Pro is known as the work horse of the Apple computer line. The former design — the aluminum tower — is rugged, expandable, and used by professional photographers, videographers, and film makers worldwide. The parts are bigger, and thus, the tools needed to work on it are bigger and it is a much “roomier” computer to service. (A definite dichotomy to servicing laptops.)
Apple has announced a new Mac Pro that will revolutionize “towers” with its slimmed-down, conical shape. This design is a drastic size reduction from the old model, and customers have expressed concern that expansion slots aren’t available in the newest incarnation. This means any external gear must be connected to the internal architecture via cables. However, since Thunderbolt is PCI Express, there’s no need for a dedicated PCI Express slots.
And while Thunderbolt does not provide the fast speed of the internal expansion slots, there is more than enough bandwidth to power massive configurations of audio inputs and outputs for music, video streams for editing, and high-speed, high capacity storage. Thunderbolt is Intel technology coupled with input from Apple and it’s something I expect to see on PCs very soon.