Crashes Waking From Sleep - 11.6.3 With CalDigit TS3 dock

I was never able to get this fixed after uninstalling all possible 3rd party software, removing all possible Kext, reinstalling the Mac OS on top of the current OS. Updating from 11.6.3 to 11.6.4 or then to 11.6.5 did not fix the issues.

After wiping the mac system drive to 0 and reinstalling the os from an external USB drive, it appears the issue is gone. Running mac os 11.6.5 with the TS3 dock on a fully clean system, I am no longer having issues with the mac crashing waking from sleep while connected to the TS3 dock. The mac wakes correctly without crashing, with the laptop screen lid closed or open and with wither one or two external displays connected vis DisplayPort. Slowly reinstalling other software applications, the issue has not returned.

Apple released 11.6.4 on Monday.  Monday morning, I upgraded my MBP 13 2020 Intel to 11.6.4 hoping that Apple already had a fix in hand.

It DID NOT fix the issue with the MBP crashing while in sleep mode connected to the CalDigit TS3.

I decided to try MBP resets for the SMC and PRAM/NVRAM.

To my surprise these worked... at first.  Monday mid-day I was immediately able to put the MBP to sleep for lunch and return 30 min later, desktop opened right up no crash back to apple logo.  I did not believe it, so I manually put the MBP to sleep again a couple of times and it always recovered.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday each time mid-day manually sent the MBP to sleep for lunch and overnight at the end of the day, no problem.  The next days I simply pressed a few keys on my external USB keyboard that is connected through the TS3, and the MBP woke up and brought me to my dual monitor desktop with a login screen.

Thursday morning MBP crashed coming out of overnight sleep.  Rebooted and retested by getting to the desktop, manually choosing to sleep the MBP, waiting 1 min, waking up MBP and system was locked up crashed to the apple Logo.

Interesting enough on Thursday morning, I have a back light LED keyboard, when the MBP goes to sleep and the TS3 is still powered the keyboard light stays on during sleep, ok by me.  When I press a key on the external keyboard the MBP normally wakes up to the login screen.  Thursday morning when I manually set the MBP to sleep after about 10-15 seconds the keyboard back lighting will go off.  That is the clue that the MBP and TS3 have crashed.  For whatever reason the TS3 shuts down USB power to the peripherals when the host is not connected, which appears to be fine and normal behavior, for me it’s a clue that the MBP has crapped out while connected to the dock.

To simplify, SMC and NVRAM resets work for about 2-3 days of use, no OS reboots by user or crash, about 3-5 sleep cycles. Then issues started re occurring.

For clarity… I have a dual monitor setup each running 2560x1600.  Once is connected via DisplayPort from the TS3 to the monitor, one is connected via TS3 thunderbolt port with a thunderbolt to DisplayPort adaptor from Pluggable.  The TS3 has a wired USB keyboard and wireless mouse from Logitech.  I am also using the wired Ethernet port on the TS3.  Normally these are all the Peripherals I have attached though other external devices are used they have not been attached this week for testing.

I have lived through this TS3 and OSX compatibility issues regarding sleep state since 2019.  It didn’t work well, got better, got worse, and is now back to not working.  You would say stop complaining and get a better dock?  Well Apple does not make an equal feature rich dock.  The CalDigit TS3 was promoted on the Apple store website and in the Apple Store so that is the one I bought hoping that at least Apple would maintain compatibility with the accessories they were selling in their own storefronts?  At the time of purchase, Apple had just dumped all the docks and software that made “DisplayLink” type docks work in favor of Thunderbolt docks so I was careful to find a dock that was Apple supported. (I think “DisplayLink” and Apple made up some time later and it works for now).

Now counting the days till the next BigSur update that will repair this but anticipating meaningful updates to BigSur are no longer in the future.  Can’t upgrade to Monterey for now.  Still rocking an Intel Mac for software and hardware compatibility issues.  I can foresee the next 2-3 years of #MacSadness as Apple drops support for these systems.  It’s a 2020 MacBook pro, only two years old and Apple may be abandoning support for Intel mac hardware.  

Don’t say you told me so….

Correction just upgraded from 11.6.2 to 11.6.3 (not 10.6.3, that was typo)