You mention you have a Apple USB keyboard plugged into your Thunderbolt display. Do you also have anything plugged into the keyboard? If so unplug those devices from the keyboard and see if it helps.
Or do you have another unpowered USB hub connected to your display, I say another because the keyboard is effectively an unpowered hub. If so try without that connected or try adding power to the hub if you can.
Moving my Wacom tablet from one of the USB ports on the keyboard to a seperate port on the Thunderbolt display has – for the moment – resolved the problems I was experiencing.
After doing lots of digging around to figure out why my keyboard and such wouldn't work 50% of the time I booted my MacBook Pro with the Thunderbolt display attached I discovered these messages in the kernel log at boot time:
| kernel[0]: USBF: | 18.735 | AppleUSBHubPort[0xffffff8015e82600]::FatalError - Port 2 of Hub at 0x40130000 reported error 0xe00002c0 while doing setting port power |
| kernel[0]: USBF: | 18.836 | AppleUSBHubPort[0xffffff8015441800]::FatalError - Port 3 of Hub at 0x40130000 reported error 0xe00002c0 while doing setting port power |
kernel[0]: [ffffff8015f77b00][AppleMultitouchDevice::start] entered
kernel[0]: Keyboard Hub::terminate(kIOServiceSynchronous) timeout
| kernel[0]: USBF: | 34.196 | AppleUSBHubPort[0xffffff8015f8ee00]::FatalError - Port 2 of Hub at 0x40130000 reported error 0xe00002c0 while doing setting port power |
| kernel[0]: USBF: | 34.298 | AppleUSBHubPort[0xffffff8015f8d000]::FatalError - Port 3 of Hub at 0x40130000 reported error 0xe00002c0 while doing setting port power |
kernel[0]: Keyboard Hub::terminate(kIOServiceSynchronous) timeout
| kernel[0]: USBF: | 49.652 | AppleUSBHubPort[0xffffff80142b8000]::FatalError - Port 2 of Hub at 0x40130000 reported error 0xe00002c0 while doing setting port power |
| kernel[0]: USBF: | 49.753 | AppleUSBHubPort[0xffffff8015f8da00]::FatalError - Port 3 of Hub at 0x40130000 reported error 0xe00002c0 while doing setting port power |
kernel[0]: Keyboard Hub::terminate(kIOServiceSynchronous) timeout
| kernel[0]: USBF: | 65.112 | AppleUSBHubPort[0xffffff8015f8c000]::FatalError - Port 2 of Hub at 0x40130000 reported error 0xe00002c0 while doing setting port power |
| kernel[0]: USBF: | 65.213 | AppleUSBHubPort[0xffffff80142ab400]::FatalError - Port 3 of Hub at 0x40130000 reported error 0xe00002c0 while doing setting port power |
Similar messages were appearing on each failed boot and were missing on the successful ones. The port power errors and the keyboard hub timeouts seemed like a definite clue! 🙂
To view the log I was using the "Console" application and selecting kernel.log in the /var/log section of the log list (left hand side of the application). You may want to look in the older kernel.log.X.bz2 files too, where X is a number from 0 to 5 on my system. The logs can be quite long, type "port power" into the "Console" application's search filter (top right of the window) to check quickly.
I discovered that typically ports on a powered USB hub can deliver 500 mA (milliamps) whereas ports on a unpowered hub typically can deilver only 100 mA. Some USB ports may be able to deliver higher current that this but it is not part of the core USB specification.
I had a Wacom tablet and an Apple mouse connected to my Apple USB keyboard which was connected to the display. Using the "System Information" application, in the Hardware -> USB section, I discovered that's around 900 mA of current requirement:
498 mA for the Wacom tablet.
100 mA for the Apple USB optical mouse.
300 ma for the keyboard itself and its built-in keyboard hub.
The MacBook Pro's USB ports can deliver upto 2000 mA (enough to charge an iPad), the USB ports on the Thunderbolt display can deliver 500 mA and the keyboard USB ports can deliver only 100 mA.
So the Wacom tablet was wanting more current than the keyboard's port could deliver and the tablet, mouse and keyboard combined was wanting more than the Thunderbolt display's USB port could deliver. Moving the Wacom tablet from one of the keyboard's USB ports to a seperate USB port on the back of the Thunderbolt display has resolved my issues -- for now at least. I've tried what must be 15 or so power off/power on cycles with the Thunderbolt display attached without issues. I'll comment again if any problems reappear, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for now. 🙂
I don't know why it would work some of the time or if I connected the Thunderbolt display to the MacBook after boot, perhaps because most the current "in-rush" will be needed at power up time or when resuming from sleep?
It may also be worth knowing that I'm running OS X Lion 10.7.3 with all the latest updates on a early 2011 MacBook Pro 15" and for some reason my display doesn't want the 1.1 Thunderbolt display firmware update – it is still running 1.0.8 firmware.
I hope this helps someone...
