There is no such thing as a dumb Thunderbolt 3/4 switch. Anywhere.

agTechTips · May 3, 2022

Thank you for helping!

TL;DR - I need suggestions for a dumb, 2 host Thunderbolt toggle switch or a pointer to where I can learn enough to make it myself

Problem:

My requirement is so simple and I still can't find any product to buy.

I want a little device that I click that toggles between two host computers with a single thunderbolt 3 or 4 passthrough. 3 ports (TB in, TB in, TB out) and 1 toggle button. I just need the dumbest toggle switch ever. The use case is my work laptop and home PC. Want to leverage all the peripherals/monitors/etc with both.

If no such thing exists, can I "build" it myself??? How hard can it possibly be to solder a few thunderbolt cables to a little toggle?!

Other considered solutions:

- KVMs, but they are stupid expensive. They do things I don't need and don't do everything as well as a simple swappy boy switch.

- Pull out the dock cable from a host and plug it in to the other computer... (like some kind of caveman)

- Read other forum posts (1/2/...) (no dice)

P.S.

Going for a little of Cunningham's law here and hoping someone proves me wrong.

mockup.drawio

emosun · May 3, 2022

20 minutes ago, agTechTips said:

If no such thing exists, can I "build" it myself??? How hard can it possibly be to solder a few thunderbolt cables to a little toggle?!

well theres 14 wires per cable and you'll need a Y branch so it would be 42 connections and some of the wires are super tiny.

you could buy an old SCSI rotary switch and that would be enough connections piled onto a single switch

agTechTips · May 3, 2022

15 hours ago, emosun said:

well theres 14 wires per cable and you'll need a Y branch so it would be 42 connections and some of the wires are super tiny.

you could buy an old SCSI rotary switch and that would be enough connections piled onto a single switch

Thank you @emosun! Found some hints based on your reply. It's a rabbit hole as you might imagine. Still hopeful someone knows a product before diving into reading TI papers lol.