I've just managed to get my
Dell D6000 dock to work seamlessly on my
MacBook Air M1 running
macOS Monterey 12.2, so I thought I'd share the
three steps (see points 3-5, below) you'll need to take to get yours fully functional (obviously there are differences between systems, but it worked a charm for me; and
if your D6000 is bricked, make that five steps (see points 1 and 2, below).
But first, two caveats and a short background before the instructions... or scroll down if you don't care and just want the instructions; I won't know.
First caveat: I'm offering advice, not taking responsibility for what you do; I hope it works for you, but please don't take the steps below unless you accept responsibility for the consequences; I had to take responsibility for my own actions, and I expect others will use their head and take their responsibility; so what follows is simply a re-run of what I did, which worked for me, in the hope that it will help others too.
Second caveat: To de-brick my D6000, I needed to get my hands on a Windows machine because I couldn't find a way to do it from my MacBook Air M1. Thankfully, my Raspberry Pi 400 running Windows 11 [very slowly LOL] sufficed. I don't think it's possible to de-brick a D6000 without a Windows machine, but if I'm wrong about this then I'd appreciate any suggestions for macOS users.
Now for the background. I brought the Dell D6000 home from work because (a) we're all working from home anyway with Omicron circulating, and (b) it was sitting there, dead as a doorknob, completely non-functional and disconnected from the wall plug, cables everywhere, and nobody cared or had a clue how to get it to work. Needless to say it was about to become landfill.
I really didn't like that thought, so I took it home and plodded away each week after work for a couple of weeks, and eventually after some 20-30 hrs (I'm persistent) I resuscitated it, took it through rehab, and now it's as good as new! *\o/*
How bricked was it? Totally bricked! Interestingly,
the HDMI port worked, but I assume it is just a pass-through from the MacBook M1's Thunderbolt port to which it was connected. (Honestly, though, this is just my guess, so I'd be interested to know from someone who knows more than I do why the HDMI port was the only functioning port on the entire device.) Otherwise,
nothing else worked. No signal on either of the two DisplayPort ports. No sign of life from any of the USB ports — both the rectangular USB-A style ports on the front and back, and the round USB-C / Thunderbolt port on the front, were all completely dead. (Pity I didn't test the sound out jack, or the ethernet connector.)
I'll skip the rest of the story, and cut to the instructions, but if you're interested then further below you'll find that I've elaborated on some points.
De-Bricking my Dell D6000 in Two Steps
Here's how I de-bricked my Dell D6000, for which I had to use a machine running Windows because I couldn't find any instructions for macOS systems. Thankfully, Microsoft has made Windows 11 available for ARM-based processors, so I installed an evaluation copy on my Raspberry Pi 400 and that gave me my Windows machine. The two instructions that follow are intended for Windows, and I'm sorry that I haven't found instructions for how to accomplish this on a Mac (if someone else knows how to do this, please post a follow-up to this message with info):
- Head to https://www.synaptics.com/products/d...lation-cleaner and download and run the Synaptics DisplayLink Installation Cleaner for Windows. (Just follow the instructions provided there.)
- Then head over to https://www.dell.com/support/home/en...sal-dock-d6000 to download and run the Dell Universal Dock (D6000) Firmware Update Utility (again, please follow the instructions provided there).
That's it. Your Dell D600 docking station should now be de-bricked, and have the latest firmware installed on it. But until I installed the right software on my Mac, I still couldn't get anything more than the single HDMI video out port to work (which worked when it was bricked anyway). So here's how I got the two DisplayPort video ports and all of the USB ports working as well (and indeed the sound and ethernet, but I never tested them to see if they worked while the D6000 was bricked, so I can't tell if this changed or not, but in any case they work now too).
Restoring DisplayPort, USB, and Other Ports' Functionality on macOS Monterey 12.2
Here is the
software I installed to get the remaining ports to work on my MacBook M1. Points 3 and 4 were needed to get video from the DislayPort ports, and point 5 was needed to get USB working.
- install the DisplayLink Manager USB Graphics Connectivity software from https://www.synaptics.com/products/d...ownloads/macos and restart your system;
- install the DisplayLink Login Screen Extension software — the download link to it is contained directly in the DisplayLink Manager app itself, as per the instructions at https://support.displaylink.com/know...apple-m1-on-m;
- finally, to enable the USB / Thunderbolt ports, I used drivers distributed by Elgato (yup, you read that right) from https://www.elgato.com/en/dock/thunderbolt-3-pro and I think I again re-started my system after installation.
With this software installed, all ports on my Dell D6000 are now functional, and the landfill is one tiny bit smaller. And it's an awesome expansion dock — love the ability to connect several external monitors on my MacBook Air M1, and the new DisplayLink software from Synaptics even has the functionality to swivel your monitor into portrait mode in either direction — thank you, Synaptics, for implementing this feature.
Notes and Musings
Why am I suggesting you install the Elgato device drivers, given that we're working with a DELL docking station? In a nutshell, with the Synaptics DisplayLink software installed, I still couldn't use any of the USB / Thunderbolt ports on the D6000, so I figured there must be another chipset in the D6000 which provides the USB hub functionality. So I started up System Report – i.e. Apple menu --> About This Mac --> System Report... – and under Hardware --> USB I found that there was a Genesys Logic chipset in there. So I copied the info for the Genesys Logic chipset together with a few search terms like "usb driver macos" into a Google search, and up came Elgato. Kinda embarrassingly simple, but that's literally what led me to try out their drivers, and once I installed the Elgato software at point 5 above, after rebooting the whole Dell D6000 was functional again!
I hope this is helpful to someone out there. It was frustrating as all hell to get it to work, and if it saves you time then I'm glad.
If you have an easier way to do what I did above, please post to this thread? It took me a couple of hours to type this up including getting the info together, but having invested all that time I'd much rather others benefit too. So if you know of a simpler method, please spare a few minutes to share it with us, k?
And if you use the instructions above and you get your Dell D6000 working with your Mac, then please post to say so. It will make me smile. Or if you see something I need to correct, again please post so I can edit my posting and correct whatever it is that you point out.
Thanks heaps, y'all.
Cheers
Nicole