Updating BIOS to 2.1.0 makes support for TB16 even worse

@cypher435 Indeed that looks very strange. Version 1.0.7 should be _really_ old. But no mentioning at all of that, just comments about the huge "improvements" it brings.

So what should we do with that "release"?

Again as typical no information at all from Dell.

Sooooo frustrating, how paying customers are treated.

Hi @arkascha,

I wanted to apologize and let you know that we talked about this today in our team meeting and @Dell-Justin C is looking into this.

Thanks for your patience and stay tuned!

@Barton,

Thank you.

@Cypher435,

I do not recommend downgrading the BIOS at this time. I will share updates on all this as soon as I have them.

@DELL-JustinC

Sorry, but there is something odd here. Your statement sounds very familiar to me, something we could read in many posts, the well known "we are working on something, please be patient". While I very well do understand that it is impossible to give dates for future solutions I still wonder what you statement actually says. I come to the conclusion: basically nothing.

I would like to ask some direct question:

1. what are the exact details DELL is currently working on which have impact on the Linux versions of the XPS series laptops and their USB-C ports?

2. what are the exact issues in that attempt, so what is solved, what is not solved?

3. why is all of this kept so extremely intransparent? Why all those extremely vague statements without _any_ substancial progress for at least many, many months now? What is DELL trying to hold back here?

Transparency is important when trying to ask for patience. Asking and denying any form of transparency (usually) signals that you are trying to buy time without actually working on the topic at all.

Sorry, don't get this wrong, I am not trying to be impolite, nor am I unwilling listen.

But I also have a wide experience in hardware and software projects, successful and failed ones, and, quite frankly, what I see here does not look good.

Any statement to this?

And it's gone... I guess it was released by mistake.

Interestingly I'm using a colleague's WD16 dock today and it works perfectly. So anyone after a quick fix could get rid of their TB16 and replace it with a WD16. I'm probably going to do exactly that.

"Interestingly I'm using a colleague's WD16 dock today and it works perfectly..."

Ignore that, the same issue presents with the WD15 dock, but less frequently.

@Arkascha,

If you'd like, you can send me a friend request and we can start a case together.

1.  Dell is aware of the fact that 2.1.0 is causing some TB16 dock instabilities. I can't go into the exact changes made to that BIOS that caused this. The issue is affecting both Windows and Ubuntu systems.

2. BIOS 2.2.1 will have changes to resolve the TB16 dock instabilities and will be released in the near future. I've seen the feedback about this BIOS and I'm very confidant 2.2.1 will resolve this TB16 issue.

3. I will be as transparent as I can, when I can. I get information at a certain speed and am working to build even more internal relationships in order to improve upon that.

It's weird. I haven't any serious problem with BIOS 2.1 and Dell DS1000 (WD-15 in different form factor as I know). Only one issue with 4.13 kernel is that I have to plug USB cable several times before it'll detect displays

I've updated from 1.3.5 (I think) or 1.3.7 to 2.1.0 yesterday, and Thunderbolt 3 has been very unreliable ever since. I have also had a few issues with WiFi. Both issues seem to be related to new errors like “PCIe Bus Error: severity=Corrected, type=Data Link Layer, id=00e8(Transmitter ID)” in my kernel logs.

I suppose (or at least I hope) it is the issue that will be fixed in 2.2.1.

In the meantime, I tried to downgrade to 1.3.5 but failed, as EFI downgrades are not possible with fwupd and the exe is not distributed by Dell anymore.

The thing that really puzzles me is:

why doesn't Dell take back that more than obviously buggy update? Why do they watch more and more paying customers to install that update, run into issues and have they hardware broken?

Unbelievable. Not even a warning about that update like "do not install this!". Nothing. Instead a recommendation to break your stuff.

@Arkascha well, it also improves other things (I've heard it greatly helped with coil whine, which was unbearable for some people) and I assume it fixes some security issues as well. Still, I'm a bit surprised at how frequently stuff gets broken and how long it takes to fix it… and the lack of transparency really doesn't help

Agree with ThibG.  I'm not saying it's ok when hardware functionality is broken, but I think we are better off with the latest considering what has been fixed.  Downgrading to anything prior to 2.1.0 and you're adding issues like the Intel ME/AT security hole, or Hyper threading bug.

Anything man made is flawed.

On the other hand, why engineer a dock and not have it be supported on all hardware manufactured by the same company when that hardware can technically plug into and be used with it?  I'm not following the supported vs unsupported logic.

BIOS 1.4 for Precision 5520 that was recently released has fixed my issues. Yay!

Hi Community,

2.2.1 is now available. Looking forward to your feedback.