How to get TB3 for HP Z840 workstation

[SDH]

Best I could do...

I think you want the big chip's details. The top 2 alphanumerics don't yield any google results but the bottom one does. Mouser had an Intel PDF on that one, attached below. The smaller chip hopefully is not one you need.

See attached PDF from Mouser.com

[DGroves]

thanks "SDH" the mouser pdf confirms that the HP card is from the TBolt three 6000 family which the HP driver i listed supports i have neither a z840 or a tbolt 3 card at the moment and this is unlikely to change till my clients do another hardware refresh

since i can't test the hardware myself all i can do/say is that HP resellers did indeed offer this card near the end of the z840's lifespan

[Z840PC]

I installed a bios update and suddenly the system recognized that there was a Thunderbolt controller in the computer but came up with this error. Could this be due to a wrong cable, or cable plugged into the wrong spot? I plugged it into the bottom right port that says E73. The port that says TBT1 on the right side in the middle section of the MOBO is physically blocked by a white connector labeled P3. The silver pins of that connector are soldered to the MOBO and prevent the cable from going in on TBT! which is why I used E73.

[DGroves]

did you follow the included directions included with the HP TBolt kit?

If installing an H.P. Thunderbolt HBA in slot #5,

jumper E3 on the Z840 motherboard must be placed on pins #1 and #2.

Failure to do so will result in non-recognition / intermittent / unreliable operation

see the inside diagram on the side cover to id slot 5

[Z840PC]

I followed the instructions but have some updates:

1. I don't see an E3 jumper on the motherboard, do you have a schematic or anything I can look at to identify where it is? I'm having trouble finding it.

2. To reiterate, I have plugged it into the E73 not E72 pins. Which means it is at the bottom, not the one that is identified as TBT1. The issue is that the plug that came with the TB3 card is too big to plug into the TBT1 pins as there is a white plug that is blocking it. The TBT2 card cable will plug into that TBT1 port no problem. However, the other end of the TBT2 card does NOT match the TBT3 card. So in essence I need one the card end to the TB3 card cable and the other end for the MB to be from the TBT2 card if I want to plug it into E72 instead of E73. I am wondering if this could be causing the issue as well?

[SDH]

You have a motherboard schematic on the inside cover of your Z840. Take a quality cell phone picture of that and post it plus the description identifiers that are under the schematic here. No blurring is key.

Second, a quality cell phone picture of the headers you are talking about would be a big help. I know those headers have writing in tiny letters on the motherboard. Pics with a flashlight turned on and aimed will help quite a bit, as would pics of the plug ends of the cables you write about.

Pictures can solve problems... and hopefully someone who has a Z440 or a Z640 or a Z840 running a HP Thunderbolt 3 card will chime in with help. I'm starting to think that the ZX40 family of workstations can only run a HP Thunderbolt 2 card.

[DGroves]

the HP TBolt 3 card in a z840 will use a 10 pin to 5 pin cable to connect the card to the motherboard, is this what you have? the HP cable 751366-001 is for the TBolt 2 card and should work with the TBolt 3 card

is your card the HP 3UU05AA Dual Port card?

later motherboard revisions may no longer have the  jumper that the original motherboard rev had

[SDH]

DGroves and others,

The single 751366-001 GPIO cable for the HP TB2 card used in the ZX40 workstations has a 1x5 plug with no blanks at the card end and 2x4 plug at the ZX40 motherboard end. There are a bunch of those on eBay to look at via that HP Assembly P/N.

EDIT: For others... this GPIO cable stuff has been confusing for quite some time. In the ZX20 family there were at least 3 or 4 different GPIO cables for the different workstations in that family because HP had to cobble together a way to get Thunderbolt (TB1) data/power in/out of those earlier motherboards which had originally been engineered before Thunderbolt even existed. To my knowledge, however, for the TB2 and TB3 cards there has been only a single GPIO cable for each of those, and each of those two cables appear incompatible to me. I'm still hoping DGroves will be able to solve the mystery of if a TB3 card can run on a Z840. The more I think about it the more I think not.

The TB3 card is a dual channel card and thus has a much higher power and data density than what a motherboard originally designed to run a TB2 single channel card likely can provide (the ZX40 motherboards). That would explain the bigger headers and the larger number of wires used in the TB3 vs TB2 GPIO cables. The dual channel TB3 cards and GPIO cables were originally engineered for the ZX G4 next generation of workstation motherboards.

I've attached below a couple of pics of the pinouts for the single GPIO cable provided for the HP TB3 card engineered for the ZX G4 workstations. The 3UU05AA kit I got for use with the Z440/Z640/Z840 Z4 G4/Z6 G4/Z8 G4 includes the GPIO cable (HP Assembly P/N L27677-001), plus 2 short Display Port cables used for dual channel DP video from/to the card, plus the TB3 card. The included GPIO cable has two 2x5 plugs (but with different positioning of the single blank each end has), and has a snap-fit connector tab at the card plug's end. The motherboard plug's end is a friction fit type instead.

I've seen no indication anywhere that there was some special adapter cable that was created by HP to allow the different types of GPIO cable plug ends let a TB3 2x5 plug end be adapted to the 2x4 motherboard header on any ZX40 workstation. On the inside cover of our Z440s the schematic gives the Thunderbolt GPIO header as position "12", and that header's pin 1 position is bottom left, the pin numbering is crisscross, and the blank is at position #8 at top right. See below. "TBT1" is by the top left corner of the header (printed on the motherboard's PCB). Hopefully the following pictures will help this make sense.

I'll just be happy to get TB3 working on the Z4 G4 I have to test with... I'll update on that later.

EDIT: The saga continues with the ZX G5 newer workstations and their HP Thunderbolt 4 card and GPIO cable kit HERE . There is some good related info from our friend Z440Roger HERE

This is the HP TB3 card/cable for the ZX G4 workstations

And, here is the pinout for the single HP TB3's GPIO cable. I had to carefully remove the strong sticky black tape at each end that was covering the cable's 9 different colored wires to see this. There are no jumper wires present in this GPIO cable's connections.

These show the pins and blank positions of the headers...

[SDH]

Install instructions attached... currently hard to find on the HP website. Note that the graphic representing the GPIO cable on page 5 shows only 3 wires... there actually are 9 wires total inside that cable.

[SDH]

A bit of added info on the HP 340L1AA TB4 card kit, related to this topic:

1. It includes a half-height form factor PCIe card but currently only comes with a full height backplane plate attached. This change may indicate HP plans to use the same card in half-height workstations in the future but for now no half-height plate is included.

2. It, also, appears to use a single unique HP GPIO cable for attachment to the ZX G5 workstations only. The motherboard GPIO header and the card's GPIO header are both 2x6 with 1 blank form factor so its GPIO cable appears to carry 11 total wires. I have not yet been able to get into one of those to provide a pinout.

3. The shorter height of the card resulted in HP using two Mini DisplayPort sockets at the backplane of the card for the two DisplayPort cables provided in the kit which have the Mini DP plug at one end and a full-height DP plug at the other. These have the same bandwidth as DP cables with full-height DP plugs at each end.

It sure looks like this HP TB4 card is not backwards compatible with earlier HP workstations from before the ZX G5 era.

There is an interesting related HP blog post HERE and pics of the TB4 card's GPIO cable header and the ZX G5 motherboard GPIO cable's plug end:

HP TB4 2x6 card header

ZX G5 motherboard GPIO header plug end